Posts by BenWilson
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Sacha,
disaster insurance could be run as a public utility for NZers
Since we end up footing the bills anyway when the insurance companies won't pay, it would be rather nice if the country actually got the premiums.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Ditto. All I'm seeing is "we're sorry, but...".
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I hear some even regulate the type and colour of any building, specify type of pets (even breeds of dog). and carwashing day is Saturday.
Would anyone owning a character villa even want to live in such a place?
The worst thing is that such solutions are even being considered seriously. Obviously what everyone who has lost their house wants is the money to just get another one. That insurance company interests dictate that hundreds of people would be considering relocating broken houses is perverse in the extreme. This isn't meant to be a salvage operation, it's a WRITE OFF, and everyone knows it. The government has deemed the areas UNINHABITABLE. Clearly anything that can't be lifted out easily is a write off, and insurances companies weaseling out of their obligations to honor their reason for existence are on the verge of becoming pariahs. That is also perverse, and intervention by the government to make sure it is not so, and that the industry can continue to be trusted, should be a major priority.
more than one international reinsurer has been contemplating legal action against the Christchurch City Council over why developments took place on land which could obviously be compromised by a significant earthquake.
It's like insurance companies have no responsibility at all to do any kind of research into the risks they are taking with the things they insure. If not, how do they ever justify being paid a premium?
There must be a number of other people like ourselves who can stand up to insurers and put pressure on for them to honour the spirit of our policies. We have a full replacement policy for our house and thought we were safe from significant financial concerns. How wrong we were!!!
Totally. I'm very heartened at the number of first time posters this thread has brought in. The insurance companies are trying to gyp you, there's no doubt whatsoever, and the more of you that get together and angry, the more influence it will have.
I fully understand that paying out in full for the damage to Christchurch will be immensely costly to insurance companies. The NZ industry certainly is having one of the worst years in its history. But here's the rub - that's exactly what they are FOR. Insurance is supposed to be about protecting people who can't afford to lose from catastrophic loss. That's how it's sold. That's the good faith bargain everyone makes when they take it out, and conversely people who don't buy it take that risk of catastrophe on themselves. It's also part of the reason that insurance companies must have enormous capital resources themselves - if they can't cover the policies they are writing, they are running a business every bit as crooked as a pyramid scheme, and deserve to go to the wall forthwith, after every last person they owe money to gets a piece of what's left.
It is, however, also a perverse outcome for the nation if this happens, rather like the collapse of central banking would be, and there's every bit as good a justification for government intervention as there is when our finance companies found themselves to be catastrophically over-committed recently. However, and this is what we didn't see (and should have seen) with the banking debacles recently is that any bailout should not come for free. The government has every right to seek massive ownership of these insurers, and to demand reform of the business so that such lies can't be sold in future. I would have very little bitterness if the price of paying everyone in Christchurch full replacement from government coffers, if at the end of that, the government fully owned a bunch of insurance companies that had demonstrated real value by actually honoring their commitments. What person in Christchurch wouldn't reinsure with them at premiums that would be fair (given the new datapoints of what has happened over the last year), keeping such a business in good money?
I know this is anathema to our current politicians, the idea of enforcing such discipline on big business, but a very loud, very angry shout from the nation might, just might be enough for them to see reason. That's if the nation does actually feel this way. I do, unfortunately, know quite a few people who are "over" Christchurch and don't feel they owe the place anything. I think they're fools, and horribly selfish, because the recovery of our second biggest city is vital to the entire national economy, and who is ever to say the same thing couldn't happen to ourselves?
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Why the finger pointing at Brownlee/Key? I know most here hate the Nats, bu surely the government cannot take on an obligation to put every single resident/owner/business into the same situation as pre-quake. That would be ruinous.
The government has immense power to make the insurance companies honor the deals they made. They could pass a law to that effect if they wanted to. It doesn't have to come out of the public purse, although that's not anywhere near as out of the question as the Nats have put it. A levy to rebuild Christchurch would hardly be that unpopular, especially considering it would be finite in term.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
From a certain point of view, as far as an insurance company’s board of directors are concerned, the shareholders are the customers.
One of the most screwed up things about modern capitalism. I'm a shareholder in my own business, along with one other person. Does that make me a customer of my business? No, of course not, it makes me an owner of the business, someone who is expected to understand the risks and returns of the endeavors I get into. My customers are the people who buy my products. If I had 10,000 silent partners buying in via the stock exchange, this does not change, and to suggest it does indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalist enterprise. They aren't buying a product from me, they're buying ownership of a business that makes products.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Goodoh,
Take a bow Gerry, you got it just right - John Armstrong in the NZ Herald this morning.
Not impressed, John.
But that does not extend to a magic wand which could return things to what they were before last September.
No one expects that. They want to be payed out by their insurers on the deal they struck. They have actually suffered, to boot, and no-one is saying Brownlee should be resurrecting the dead, or repairing the fault line. Just that he should be doing everything within his considerable power to make sure that thousands upon thousands of people are not rendered destitute by corporate irresponsibility.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to webweaver,
which means that none of the rest of us can switch policies to a better insurer because they're all behaving in the same appalling manner. Bastards.
We can, however, switch governments.
It’s not like the govt’s planning to build a motorway through the red zone, which I agree would be different (though equally distressing).
Precisely. "Destruction by the government" is clearly meant to mean policy moves in which they compulsorily acquire land for development. This is NOTHING LIKE THAT. This is destruction by an earthquake that is so extreme that the government has found the entire area to be uninhabitable. Nothing is clearer than that full replacement insurance is meant to cover such an outcome. Definitely and absolutely this is weaseling, on a massive and reprehensible scale. Insurance companies take out a bet that this destruction will not happen when they give you the policy, and they profit handsomely for years because these things are very unlikely. However, sometimes they lose, as they have in the case of Christchurch. If they can't pay out, they should go to the wall, exactly like they are trying to force on thousands of their customers. That is the risk/return equation in place. That is "the consequences of choices" which the insurance companies are so quick to point out to the uninsured. They must pay, and if they go broke, that is too bad for them. If the government decides to rescue them from actually receiving this market discipline, then that is probably a good thing, but ONLY because it means their customers are not ripped off in the most shocking case of responsibility dodging this country has ever seen. Ever. And in that case the lesson is one the government wears, and should learn to make sure that insurance companies have sufficient assets to back the policies they have written, by law, and without exception.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to David Haywood,
I'm not entirely sure it would survive a trip. But the same idea has occurred to me -- and it may be worth a go.
It might indeed. I've moved one house before, and it is quite incredible what can be done, well worth the inquiry. I had mine cut in half right down the middle so that it could be taken down a narrow driveway to the subdivided section I had purchased. The machines used and the skills of the operators were amazing, to say the least.
Edit: Also, bear in mind that a house stuck on the back of a trailer which then (in my case) travels 300 kilometers along winding state highways and bumpy urban streets, is probably undergoing similar stress to an earthquake. They know how to put them on there so they won't fall off or break!
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to James Butler,
Perhaps it will qualify as a write-off after it's been bulldozed?
It seems like the ultimate in bullshit to only cover for repairs on something that can't be repaired. And yes, that occurred to me, that if they will only pay for repairs, then they can bloody well repair it, fully, on-site, then David could have it removed and put on a new section. Or perhaps removed and then repaired. Then they can decide if they think that's cheaper than just honoring the whole point of a total replacement policy.
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WTF???
Sounds like lawyer time. So sorry, and so angry. I can't think of anything that fits the description of a write-off better than a house you must vacate so that it can be bulldozed.
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