Reminder - Insurance matters - Treasury Survey and BC contacts
From ICW’s Geraldine Murphy - Spokesperson on Seismic Matters - 0274 507804
Kia ora koutou.
Here’s:
a reminder about the insurance issues covered in our earlier email of 16 Jan (see below) on The Treasury insurance survey and collection of contact details of chairpersons
and a heads-up about a documentary series called 'A Living Hell: Apartment Disasters 2' which will screen on SkyOpen from 4 February 2024.
The status of the Treasury insurance survey
Thank you to those who have completed and sent in your completed survey. This is sincerely appreciated. So far around 25 responses have been received. This is a low number considering there are over 250 apartment buildings in the central city and inner suburbs alone. The Body Corporate Chairs' Group has sent an email to its members and we hope/expect that there will be responses from all its members.
In the meantime, ICW encourages you to:
if you have already forwarded the survey: check with your Chairperson that a response has been provided, or is underway
or, if you have not yet forwarded the survey: forward the survey document (or this email) and ask for it to be completed on behalf of all owners before the deadline of 15 February.
The completed survey should be sent to lisa.davies@treasury.govt.nz
We are aware that there will be duplication in communications you may receive about it, but we feel it is critical to ensure you are aware of it and that we get a large number of responses to ensure The Treasury has enough data to effectively inform the Minister.
This is our earlier 16 January email
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About this email
ICW (Inner-City Wellington Residents Associations) is part of a group focused on the issue of rising costs for insurance for inner-city Wellington residential buildings.
We know that the cost of insurance is a significant issue for many inner-city residents but there's a big gap in the information available to central government about insurance challenges for apartment buildings. This is serious, given that the inner-city has over 125 apartment buildings where thousands of people are already owner-occupiers or tenants, with more to come.
This email is to ask for your help with the following:
to circulate and complete the attached Treasury Survey on insurance premiums for apartment buildings
to provide us with the contact details of the Chairperson (or Committee member) of your building.
- If you are the Chairperson, we urge you to read this email and provide the required information.
- If you are not the Chairperson, please could you forward this email to the Chairperson or a Committee member, urging them to respond.
What to do & the background
1. Please download and complete the Word-based Treasury survey - because the Treasury does not have information about apartment buildings
(contact us for the survey)
In mid-2022, the Treasury approached ICW and the Body Corporate Chairs' Group (BCCG) to discuss its initiative to collect information on insurance premiums for apartment buildings. The information would inform its work on monitoring price and availability changes following the increase to the EQC cap, and to track changes in insurance price and availability more broadly over time. As the Treasury's sources to obtain information on standalone houses does not include apartment buildings, we discussed how ICW and BCCG could assist through our networks.
The survey is an opportunity for Chairpersons of apartment buildings to provide data on your experience of obtaining insurance on behalf of the owners in your buildings. This data will be used to inform Ministers of the realities of insurance for apartment buildings.
This survey is the only source of information for the Treasury on apartment building insurance matters. The Treasury has provided a brief background in the attached document, along with contact details if you have any questions.
ICW urges you to respond and complete this survey - the more responses, the better informed the Ministers will be.
2. Collecting the contact details of Chairpersons of apartment buildings to engage on insurance issues
Separate from the Treasury survey, ICW and a few Body Corporate Chairs are looking into the issues around natural disaster (EQ) insurance facing apartment buildings. The cost and availability of natural disaster insurance cover in Wellington for multi-unit, multi-owner apartment buildings is creating problems with affordability and, in turn, saleability and value.
The Unit Titles Act constrains Body Corporates' options in terms of insurance cover. We have established a collaborative group to coordinate research and engagement with relevant Ministers, government agencies and people in the insurance sector.
Having current data on apartment buildings and insurance cover is essential for this. As there is not a central database of apartment buildings we are seeking your help to collect or confirm the names and contact details for the Body Corporate, Company Share, Cross-lease Chair of your apartment building so we can communicate directly with them to assess the level of interest in this issue and as a source of data to inform our research and engagement with key stakeholders.
The data we would like to collect initially is:
Address (and name, if there is one) of building
Name of building chairperson
Email address of chairperson
Number of units in the building
Whether the legal structure of the building is unit title, company share, or cross lease
We are seeking confirmation from the Chair, that ICW can:
·use your data for the purpose of research and communications on insurance matters;
provide your data to a small working group of body corp chairs/ICW for engagement and data gathering for multi-unit insurance-related purposes;
use your data for communications on general apartment building matters that may be of interest to multi-unit owners.
Privacy: Building identification and contact information will not be provided to any other third party unless the Body Corporate Chairperson/individual expressly agrees.
We are aware that people may still be away over this holiday period and we will send reminder emails to ensure everyone has an opportunity to respond. BCCG (Body Corporate Chairs Group) will also be circulating information on the Treasury survey. Some recipients may receive multiple emails - and we apologise for this - but we believe that insurance is such an important issue that chairs will want to respond.
If you have any questions about these activities, please respond to this email: innercitywellington@gmail.com
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Documentary
You may recall a documentary in 2021 focusing primarily on weathertightness issues in apartment buildings. Further episodes in this series will start on Sunday 4 February, 8.30pm on the free to air channel Sky Open (previously Prime). Seismic issues are covered in the first episode on 4 February.
The three episodes will canvas a number of issues:
lessons from the past,
lessons from the present,
lessons for the future.
About the earlier programme
The 2021 episode was shown again on SkyOpen on Sunday 28 January, 8.30pm. We've been told all episodes are likely to be available on Neon at some point.
Geraldine Murphy - Spokesperson on Seismic Matters - 0274 507804
