AA Insurance is temporarily halting new insurance in Westport

Kate Newtown, writing for RNZ:

AA Insurance, which has approximately half a million New Zealand customers, wrote to Buller District Mayor Chris Russell at the very end of 2025 to tell him the company would halt new business, home and landlord insurance policies for properties in the 7825 postcode, which covers Westport, Carters Beach and Cape Foulwind.
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Victoria University emeritus professor Jonathan Boston, who was part of a previous government expert working group on climate adaptation, said AA Insurance's decision was just the first of many to come.

This is the beginning of a very chaotic transition. The Government has chosen that, instead of managing a retreat away from areas made dangerous by global warming, we are on our own.

To most of us, that sounds like we can live where we like and accept the risk.

If insurance agencies go one step further and start revoking insurance from existing properties… who will people sell their homes to?

Getting a mortgage for a property whose value has been destroyed because it’s uninsurable will be… very difficult.

Too many New Zealanders depend on their homes increasing in value more than inflation in order to retire.

If people‘s homes are inundated, uninsured, and unliveable, what happens next? Many people have no real investments and emergency funds outside of their home equity. Where will they go? What will they do?

Seriously. Has anyone in Government actually played this scenario out?

A warming world offers us a variety of shit sandwiches to eat. The Government could battle day after day to change the status quo to protect what we love from extreme climate. Or, they could do nothing about the problem and pay people out for increasingly expensive disasters.

But in reality, the Government chose to do nothing about the problem, and not pay people out, leaving them to suffer.

If this is what fixing the basics and building the future looks like to them, I want no part in it.