EQC passes halfway mark in claims assessment

Gerry Brownlee. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Earthquake Commission (EQC) is now more than halfway through assessments of claims lodged after the Canterbury earthquake, the Government says.

Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee said today the commission received more than 169,000 claims after the September 4 earthquake and three major aftershocks.

"Today EQC passed the halfway mark and has now assessed more than 84,500 properties," Mr Brownlee said.

"It says it is on track to have completed assessments for all of the claims it has received to date by March 31."

Mr Brownlee said EQC now had more than 400 loss adjusters and estimators working in the field and would be bringing in another 90 by the end of the month.

"Some Cantabrians have expressed concern about the time it is taking for EQC assessments to take place, so I am pleased EQC is committing more resources to get all assessments done as quickly as possible," he said.

"EQC says it has only received about 95 requests from claimants for a reassessment because they disagreed with their first assessment, which is a relatively small number given the scale of this event."

He said the commission received about 70 per cent more claims than was expected.

"By world standards, this is a large-scale disaster and I appreciate the patience shown by Canterbury residents as EQC works through the claims assessment phase," he said.

"It's clear the remediation of properties to follow will be a huge task and it will take some time."

Mr Brownlee said EQC had now paid out $624 million on claims, which was about 20 per cent of what it expected to pay out in total.

- NZPA