Insuring the Future: Reimagining Home Insurance in Aotearoa

In this clear-eyed work, public policy expert Jonathan Boston tackles one of the urgent challenges presented by climate change: as extreme weather events escalate, how can home insurance remain accessible and affordable?

Given New Zealand’s distinctive natural hazards profile and numerous at-risk communities, small policy changes won’t be enough. A paradigm shift is required across risk governance, adaptation planning, and property insurance. We need vigorous risk avoidance, fair risk-sharing through reformed natural hazard insurance, and serious public investment in adaptation, including planned relocation where long-term protection is neither cost-effective nor feasible.

Navigating the stark realities of our future will be challenging, and there are powerful political incentives for procrastination. But delay will be costly; poor policy choices likewise. Insuring the Future seeks to encourage public debate and proposes practical, integrated solutions.

‘This is an urgent and timely book, one that leaves the reader equipped to grapple with a challenge most of us have barely begun to grasp.’ —Max Rashbrooke

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