Insuring the Future: Reimagining Home Insurance in Aotearoa

As the effects of climate change intensify across Aotearoa New Zealand, securing home insurance is no longer a sure thing. Nor is it always affordable.

In this clear-eyed work, public policy expert Jonathan Boston tackles one of the defining policy challenges of climate change: how can residential property insurance remain accessible and affordable as climate-intensified risks escalate? Given New Zealand’s distinctive natural hazards profile and numerous at-risk communities, small policy changes won’t be enough. Sustainable insurance affordability will require a paradigm shift in risk governance, adaptation planning, and property insurance arrangements. We need fair, collective risk-sharing, vigorous risk avoidance, and serious public investment in risk reduction, including planned relocation where long-term protection is neither cost-effective nor feasible.

Navigating the stark realities of climate-intensified risks and implementing effective reforms will be challenging. There are powerful political incentives for procrastination and buck-passing. But delay will be costly; poor policy choices likewise. To enable progress, evidence-informed public debate about the policy options is vital. Insuring the Future seeks to encourage that debate and proposes a practical, integrated set of reforms.

Jonathan Boston is an Emeritus Professor of Public Policy who has published widely on public management, social policy, climate change policy, tertiary education and comparative government. At Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, he has served as Director of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies and Director of the Institute of Policy Studies, and earlier worked for the New Zealand Treasury and taught at the University of Canterbury. He has contributed to major public policy initiatives, including tertiary education reform, the funding of research, and measures to reduce child poverty. During 2022–23 he served on the Expert Working Group on Managed Retreat. A 2014 Fulbright Fellow, he is an Honorary Senior Fellow of the Helen Clark Foundation, co-edits Policy Quarterly, and has served on several boards, including Oxfam Aotearoa.

Cover design: Todd Atticus