Earthquake Recover Minister Gerry Brownlee says insurers are nervous about backing Christchurch.
“We’re constantly talking to them [insurers] and providing information to them about the geology so they can be more confident about the risk, letting them know what we’re doing around foundation standards and the decisions we’ve made over the land so far,” says Mr Brownlee.
“We know more about what’s under this city than most places do anywhere in the world.”
The minister says most of the city remains insured, but problems arise with insuring new projects.
“The reality is that the risk here has been hard to determine because of the ongoing seismic activity, over 10,000 earthquakes, anybody putting up their capital to back new buildings is going to be a little bit nervous," he says.
Additional wrangles over business interruption insurance are complicated says the minister.
“Business interruption insurance is not a fixed thing…for a lot of people they will discover their business interruption insurance wasn’t what they expected and wasn’t what they had wanted and you can’t retrospectively cover yourself. So there’s a lot of lessons in this for other parts of New Zealand," says Mr Brownlee.
For many Christchurch businesses, the opportunity to access business interruption cover comes to an end today.
However Mr Brownlee says today is about remembering the people who lost their lives, and the many others who suffered “pretty horrific” injuries.
“The last 12 months have been very very busy for almost everybody here, there’ll be no-one in this city that hasn’t been changing something about their daily lives to make things move a bit more quickly,” says Mr Brownlee.
“It’s a time to reflect on how big this is, how much it’s really affected us and the huge challenge that still lies in front of us. That’s sobering,” he says.
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