New Zealand’s flood risk models have a structural gap, and two pieces of research published within 24 hours of each other in late August 2026 have made it impossible to overlook.
On August 25, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) published findings from its Experiences of tangata whenua with insurances report, concluding that the insurance system does not consistently meet the needs of whānau, hapū, and iwi. The following day, the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake (NHC) published details of the first hazard model in Aotearoa to represent cultural loss as a measurable output alongside physical and economic damage.
Read together, the two reports define the same problem from different angles: a category of real, material loss that exists in coastal New Zealand – and in brokers’ books – with no policy framework to cover it.
The FMA’s report, produced through its Matangirua programme in partnership with Demos and Data, surveyed 952 participants. The research was led by Dr Lara Greaves alongside FMA strategic adviser Māori Hannah Chapman. It found that 17% had experienced an insurance problem in the past two years – almost twice the rate recorded in a comparable survey of the general population. FMA strategic adviser Māori Hannah Chapman was direct about the cause: “Current insurance settings do not accommodate whenua Māori and multiple or collective ownership and ways of living.”
The report found that participants raised specific concerns about “valuation, replacement costs, and whether insurance products adequately reflect actual risk and cultural and intergenerational value." It also found that 71% of participants supported iwi-led and Māori-designed approaches as the preferred solution.
For brokers, the FMA identified a clear opportunity: building the cultural literacy to work with collective ownership structures and being positioned as a “trusted navigator” – the role participants said they most wanted when navigating claims.
The NHC-published research, developed for Te Pokohiwi o Kupe (Wairau Bar) at the mouth of the Wairau River in Marlborough, takes a different angle on the same gap. Rangitāne o Wairau partnered with Earth Sciences New Zealand and Marlborough District Council to build a flood model, then incorporated mātauranga Māori – gathered through wānanga and interviews with kaumātua – as structured, measurable indicators of cultural impact.
The model projects that up to 75% of the low-lying area could be affected by a one-in-100-year storm event by 2130 under projected sea level rise. The site contains wāhi tapu, urupā, and ancestral remains and is considered one of Aotearoa’s earliest human settlements.
Earth Sciences NZ project lead Dr Shaun Williams said: “This is the first time in Aotearoa that we’ve been able to represent cultural loss in a hazard model in a meaningful, measurable way.”
Rangitāne general manager Corey Hebberd put the issue plainly: “Collectively, we’re good at modelling financial and economic loss, but that’s only part of the picture. For us, the real question is what happens to our identity, our history, and our connection to this place.”
Brokers are operating in a flood risk environment that is already under pressure, with the trajectory pointing in one direction. A five-year study by Earth Sciences New Zealand, published in October 2025, found that more than 750,000 New Zealanders live in locations exposed to one-in-100-year rainfall flooding events. Around $235 billion worth of buildings are exposed under the current climate.
A July 2026 report commissioned by the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission projected that, under a high-emissions scenario, annual inland flood damage to infrastructure will rise from $300 million per year in 2025 to around $465 million by 2075. Coastal flooding damages are expected to almost double, from $165 million to around $325 million per year.
The Climate Change Commission’s 2026 National Climate Change Risk Assessment reinforced the cultural dimension of that exposure. It identified disruption to tikanga and hapū/iwi identity as one of seven priority risk domains for Māori – noting that many culturally significant sites sit in locations now highly exposed to climate hazards. The commission’s 2026 progress report on the national adaptation plan added that current frameworks have “little focus on supporting Māori-led adaptation, or on minimising the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage and wellbeing.”
The Natural Hazards Insurance Act 2023, which came into force on July 1, 2024, covers residential buildings and land. It makes no provision for cultural loss – the category both the FMA research and the Wairau Bar model are now describing in measurable terms.
Taonga tūturu – physical items of Māori cultural heritage – are governed by the Protected Objects Act 1975, which restricts their export and in some cases their sale or transfer. Standard commercial policies are not designed to address the cultural significance of these items or that legal framework, according to Charity Insurance, a specialist New Zealand adviser to the not-for-profit sector.
The Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) has, in turn, called for action through the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill, introduced to Parliament on July 15, 2026. Chief executive Kris Faafoi said: “Planning is important, but what insurers, councils, and communities need to see now is action that reduces risk and helps protect people, property, and infrastructure.”
The Wairau Bar model creates something that has not previously existed: a methodology linking flood intensity to specific cultural outcomes – disruption to ancestral connections, impacts on urupā, loss of mahinga kai – in a structured, measurable form.
NHC head of research Dr Natalie Balfour said the utility extends beyond the immediate site: “This turns hazard science into something people can use right now to make real decisions about what to protect and prioritise.”
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has also signalled interest in incorporating mātauranga Māori into broader hazard and risk frameworks, according to the NHC.
For brokers, the two August reports mark a shift. Cultural loss is no longer an undefined concept – it now has a methodology, a regulator asking questions about it, and a policy framework that does not yet account for it. That gap is where the broker conversation starts.
