Natural Hazards Commission - Reinsurance Broker (Advance Notice)

The Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake (NHC) is a NZ Crown entity investing in natural disaster research, education and providing insurance to residential property owners. The NHI Act sets out our organisation’s primary objective: to reduce the impact of natural hazards on people, property and the community. We want to ensure New Zealanders have access to affordable natural hazard insurance, a…

The Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake (NHC) is a NZ Crown entity investing in natural disaster research, education and providing insurance to residential property owners. The NHI Act sets out our organisation’s primary objective: to reduce the impact of natural hazards on people, property and the community. We want to ensure New Zealanders have access to affordable natural hazard insurance, and that communities continue to increase their resilience to natural disasters.

We do this by providing the first layer of residential land and building insurance cover for a range of natural hazards, and through careful administration of the Natural Hazard Fund. New Zealanders can have confidence their claims will be paid because NHCover is funded by levies, reinsurance and a Crown guarantee.

NHC undertook a two-stage tender for reinsurance broking services in September 2017, starting with an open ROI followed by an RFP with four shortlisted respondents. The incumbent, AON was ultimately successful in this process and have been our broker for the past seven years. Over those seven years we have secured a significant boost in reinsurance protection for New Zealand from $4.5 billion in 2017 to $10.3 billion locked in from 1 June 2025 which includes $225 million from a multi-year catastrophe bond placed in 2023.

Reinsurance broking services are a critical component for the successful delivery of our reinsurance programme. The reinsurance broker is the key conduit between NHC and global reinsurance markets. The broker provides data, analytics and direct access to markets, enabling well-informed placement options and alignment with the NHC risk financing strategy.

This advance notice is to inform potential suppliers of our upcoming plans relating to the procurement of reinsurance broking services.

We are currently planning to engage with the market through a Request for Information released in early November 2025 seeking feedback on service design and the procurement of a broker(s). This information will be reviewed and used to inform our procurement strategy. We intend to release a Request for Proposals in late May/early April 2026 with the objective of selecting a preferred supplier(s) by late August 2026. This will allow us to negotiate and agree a contract before the end of 2026. We expect the services to begin in January 2027.