Vero has revealed it has now paid out over $5 billion in Canterbury earthquake claims.

The amount was at 30 September 2016, and is more than a quarter of the $19 billion private insurers have paid out in total, according to figures released by ICNZ yesterday.

Vero’s EGM claims, Jimmy Higgins, said for residential buildings, 95% of their claims had been cash settled, repaired or were being repaired.

“We’ve got 342 left to resolve (including path and driveway claims). We’ve also cash settled or repaired 93% of our commercial property claims.”

Higgins said they now expected total earthquake claim payments to top $5.4 billion, meaning they were now over 92% complete based on what they’d paid to date.

However, he said: “With new claims still being reported, we continue to see a growth in our expected amount to be paid.

“In the last 12 months we’ve received over 100 additional claims, and we expect this to continue as EQC winds up its own recovery programme.”

He added: “We’re working with EQC to try and identify these claims as soon as possible, but it does mean our total claims figure, and the percentage we consider to be complete, can be hard to quantify.”

Higgins said Vero was trying to counter that by urging customers who thought they may go overcap to let them know so they could review their case with EQC.

 
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