The EQC and Your House Insurance Policy

What is the EQC?

The Earthquake Commission (EQC) provides natural disaster insurance for residential homes and certain areas of residential land in New Zealand.

You automatically have EQC cover if you have a current private house insurance policy that includes fire insurance. Part of the premium you pay for your house insurance is made up of an EQC levy, which we collect on EQC’s behalf.

What does EQC cover?

EQC insures your home against certain types of damage caused by events including earthquakes, natural landslips, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, or hydothermal activity.

As well as your home, EQC also covers residential land, within limits, for the same events, as well as against storm and flood damage. Damage to your house and contents from storms or floods is covered by your private insurance.

The EQC also covers fire damage resulting from any of these types of natural disaster.

What type of damage to residential buildings does EQC cover?

EQC insures:

• Your home, holiday home, or rental property.
• One or more homes in the same building (e.g. in an apartment building).
• Some separate buildings on your property like garages.
• Services that you own, such as water pipes and electrical cables, up to 60m from your home.

What type of damage to land does EQC cover?

EQC covers damage to land within your property boundary, including:

• The land under your home and under outbuildings like garages.
• The land within eight metres of your home and outbuildings.
• The land under or supporting your main accessway, up to 60 metres from your home (but not the driveway surfacing).

EQC also provides some cover for:

• Bridges and culverts within the areas listed above.
• Some retaining walls, up to 60 meters from your home, that are necessary to support or protect the home, outbuildings, insured land, or main accessway.
• Removing debris from your insured land, such as debris left behind by floods or land slips.

Certain items on the land such as trees, plants, lawns and driveways aren’t covered by EQC.

Are house contents covered by EQC?

In 2019, EQC stopped providing cover for damage to contents. If you took out a contents policy after 2019, or renewed your contents policy after that date, your contents are not covered by EQC.

In these cases, your MAS contents policy provides cover for damage that has occurred to your contents.

How much cover does EQC provide?

If you need to make a claim for natural disaster damage, EQC will cover a portion of your loss, up to a capped amount.

For damage to your home, your claim will be covered by the EQC up to $150,000 (+GST), per dwelling. If the damage is more than this capped amount, MAS covers the rest.

The amount you can receive for damage to residential land is assessed in a slightly different way. EQC will cover either the value of the damaged land or the cost to repair the damage land, whichever is the lesser amount. These amounts are determined by an assessor and other specialists.

EQC also covers bridges, culverts and retaining walls that support the home or insured land. The amount you receive will be the cost to repair them to the state they were in before the loss or damage occurred. This means that the valuation will take into account their age and previous state of repair.

MAS house insurance policies do not include cover for land damage. However, if your claim is accepted by EQC, we may provide some limited cover for driveway resurfacing and top-up cover for retaining walls.

How do I make an EQC claim?

If you need to make a claim and you hold a current house insurance policy with MAS, we manage your entire claim from lodgement to settlement. This includes managing claims for any EQC-covered damage on your behalf.

You can lodge your claim online with MAS or phone us on 0800 800 627.

You may need to pay multiple excesses

If your claim is accepted by EQC, you will need to pay an excess, which will be deducted from your claim settlement.

For damage to your home, this is 1% of the amount payable for the claim, with a minimum excess of $200. The maximum excess you will pay for your EQC Home claim is $1,725 per dwelling.

You may also need to pay a separate excess for an EQC Land claim, even if it’s related to the same event. This is 10% of the amount payable for the claim, with a minimum of $500 per dwelling on the land. The maximum excess you will pay for your EQC Land claim is $5,000.

There will also be an excess you need to pay on claims you make against your MAS policy for damage that is not covered by the EQC Act.