EQC reaches halfway mark on assessment of claims

Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee has welcomed today's news the Earthquake Commission is now more than halfway through assessments of claims lodged after the Canterbury earthquake.

The Earthquake Commission has received more than 169,000 claims from the Canterbury earthquake on 4 September (7.1 magnitude), and the three major aftershocks on 19 October (5.0 magnitude), 14 November (4.9 magnitude) and 26 December (4.9 magnitude).

Today, EQC passed the halfway mark and has now assessed more than 84,500 properties. It says it is on track to have completed assessments for all of the claims it has received to date by 31 March 2011.

"EQC now has more than 400 loss adjustors and estimators working in the field and will be bringing on another 90 loss adjustors and estimators by the end of the month," Mr Brownlee says.

"Some Cantabrians have expressed concern about the time it is taking for EQC assessments to take place, so I am pleased EQC is committing more resources to get all assessments done as quickly as possible," he says.

"EQC says it has only received about 95 requests from claimants for a reassessment because they disagreed with their first assessment, which is a relatively small number given the scale of this event," Mr Brownlee says.

EQC received about 70 per cent more claims from the Canterbury earthquake than was expected.

"By world standards, this is a large-scale disaster and I appreciate the patience shown by Canterbury residents as EQC works through the claims assessment phase. It's clear the remediation of properties to follow will be a huge task and it will take some time," Mr Brownlee says.

In terms of cost, the Canterbury earthquake is the largest ever insurance event in New Zealand’s history. Before Christmas, EQC estimated the cost of EQC claims for the 4 September earthquake would be between $2.75 billion and $3.5 billion.

"The Canterbury earthquake has also been ranked as the fourth most costly earthquake for insurers since 1970 so the recovery process in Canterbury will take some time," Mr Brownlee says.

EQC has now paid out $624 million on claims, which is about 20 per cent of what they expect to pay out in total for claims from the Canterbury earthquake.