Who AMI is, and who carries the risk
AMI is one of the oldest household insurance names in New Zealand. It is owned by IAG, the largest general insurer in the country, which also owns State and NZI and underwrites house policies sold under several bank brands.
That ownership is not a detail. It means the company that actually pays an AMI claim is the same company that pays a State claim, and it means the two wordings come out of the same place. The section further down sets out how similar they turn out to be.
This page describes the home half of the Home Plus wording. Home Plus is the more complete of the AMI house products, so the limits below are the higher ones AMI publishes, not the entry level. Contents is a separate policy and this site does not cover it.
Two settlement bases, and the one that ignores your sum insured
Your policy schedule, the page that lists your address and your cover, shows a basis of settlement. In the AMI wording it is either Sum insured replacement or Replacement, and the difference between them is large.
Under Sum insured replacement, the most AMI pays for a loss is your total sum insured. That is the ordinary New Zealand arrangement. You give the insurer a number and the number is the ceiling.
Under Replacement, that ceiling is lifted in one specific situation. Where the loss comes from fire or explosion, the fire is not caused by a natural hazard, and you repair or rebuild, the wording says the limit of your home sum insured does not apply. What applies instead is the replacement cost of the house up to the floor area shown on your schedule.
So on a Replacement policy the number that protects you against a house fire is not your sum insured. It is the floor area, in square metres, printed on your schedule. That is a far easier figure to check and a far easier figure to keep right, and it is one most people have never looked at.
The limits do not lift for anything else. A flood, an earthquake, a storm or a landslip is still capped by the sum insured on either basis, and so is a fire that a natural hazard started. The wording is precise about that, and the distinction matters, because the fires people worry about and the fires that follow an earthquake are treated differently.
Three sums insured, and what sits inside each
The AMI wording uses three separate figures and they are easy to confuse.
The home sum insured is the cost to rebuild the house. Sitting inside it, not on top of it, are three capped items. All retaining walls come to fifty thousand dollars. A permanently fixed swimming pool and its equipment comes to fifty thousand dollars. A bridge, culvert, permanent ford or dam comes to fifteen thousand dollars.
A special feature sum insured is what you get when one of those items is listed separately on your schedule with its own figure. Retaining walls over fifty thousand dollars, a pool over fifty thousand, a crossing over fifteen thousand, a wharf, pier, landing or jetty, and a cable car all have to be handled this way. If they are not on the schedule as special features, the caps above are what applies.
The total sum insured is the home sum insured, plus every special feature sum insured, plus all the automatic and optional benefits, unless a particular benefit says otherwise. It is the ceiling on the whole of the home part of the policy for one event.
This site publishes no rebuild figures and does not estimate one, because a wrong number is how people end up underinsured and a web page cannot see your house. Every large New Zealand insurer runs a free rebuild calculator, and a registered valuer will do the same job in person for a fee.
What is included as standard
These are the automatic benefits in the Home Plus wording, which means they are in the policy without being bought separately. The limit column gives the figure at this product level.
A larger limit is not the same as better cover. The clause behind the limit decides what the money can be spent on, and several of the clauses below are much narrower than their figures suggest.
| Benefit | What it covers | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Natural hazard damage | Sudden accidental loss to the house from earthquake, flood, landslip and the other natural hazards. | The gap above your Commission entitlementAMI pays the difference between what the Natural Hazards Commission owes and what the policy would pay. The Commissionβs own excess is not covered. |
| Temporary accommodation | Somewhere of a similar standard to live, for you, your partner, family living with you, and your pets. | $30,000 per event, per dwellingMain residence only. It also pays when an authority orders you out because damage is coming, even before anything has happened. |
| Methamphetamine contamination | Cleaning up contamination that first happens and is found while you are insured. | $30,000 per dwellingNot covered if you or your family caused it. Largely unavailable where the house is not your main residence and is tenanted for more than 90 days. |
| Retaining walls | Walls holding back earth on the property. | $50,000, inside the home sum insuredThis is a cap within your sum insured, not extra money. Listing the wall as a special feature with its own sum insured is what lifts it. |
| Swimming pool | A permanently fixed pool and the equipment it needs, such as pumps. | $50,000, inside the home sum insuredSame structure as retaining walls. A more expensive pool needs to be a special feature. |
| Bridge, culvert, ford or dam | Permanent crossings and water structures on the property. | $15,000, inside the home sum insuredRelevant on rural and lifestyle properties, where a single culvert can cost more than this. |
| Hidden gradual damage | Accidental hidden damage that first happens and is found while insured with AMI. | $3,000 per period of insuranceThe thing that leaked is not covered. Undamaged parts of the house that have to be opened up to reach it are, with approval first. |
| Landscaping | Restoring the garden or lawn, either damaged by the same event or wrecked by the repair work. | $1,500 per event |
| Stress payment | A cash payment for the stress of losing the house, where AMI decides the dwelling is a total loss. | $2,000On top of the building settlement, not out of it. |
| Sustainability upgrade | Upgrading to products that use less energy or water, or reduce environmental impact, when rebuilding. | $15,000Total loss only, you have to rebuild, and AMI has to approve the products. |
| Fatal injury | A payment to the legal representative where fire, burglary, theft or a home invasion fatally injures you or your family. | $10,000 per eventSplit equally if more than one person is entitled. |
| Replacement of keys and locks | Replacing keys, altering or replacing the locks they opened, and opening a safe or strongroom. | No excess where the claim is only for keysCovers electronic keys, swipe cards and combinations, and applies where a key is believed on reasonable grounds to have been copied. |
| Water or sewage pipe blockage | Clearing a blocked underground water or sewage pipe you are legally responsible for. | $500 per period of insurance, no excessNo other maintenance is covered. |
| Sale and purchase | Cover for the buyer where the house is damaged after an unconditional contract is signed. | Until settlement or possessionOnly if the buyer has no other insurance on the house at the time. |
| Legal liability | What you owe someone else for accidentally damaging their property or injuring them. | $2 million per eventIncludes costs, expenses and reparation within that figure. |
| Electronic programs | Restoring, reprogramming or resetting the software in electronics built into the house. | Necessary and reasonable costThe data itself is not covered. |
How the excess comes off, which is not how most people assume
An excess is the first part of a claim you pay yourself. On most policies it simply comes off what you are paid, and on the AMI wording that is true right up to the point where a benefit limit is involved.
The wording gives two worked examples of its own. Where a benefit has a five thousand dollar limit and your claim is two thousand five hundred, a seven hundred and fifty dollar excess comes off your claim and you are paid one thousand seven hundred and fifty. Where a benefit has a two thousand dollar limit and your claim is two thousand five hundred, the excess comes off the limit instead, and you are paid one thousand two hundred and fifty.
Read the second one again. Where the claim is bigger than the benefit limit, the excess is deducted from the limit rather than from the claim, so the benefit never pays its full stated figure. Any capped benefit in the table above is worth less than its number by the amount of your excess.
There is one piece of good news in the same section. Where several policies you hold with AMI at the same address are involved in one claim, only the highest single excess is deducted rather than one per policy.
Your cover shrinks after a claim until the work is done
This clause is unusual enough to be worth its own section, and it is not obvious from a summary or a comparison table.
When AMI pays a claim for damage to the house or to a special feature, the relevant sum insured and the total sum insured are both reduced by the amount needed to repair that loss. The reduction applies from the start of the period of insurance, not from the date of the claim.
The wording works an example. A retaining wall claim costing sixty thousand dollars against a special feature sum insured of one hundred thousand leaves forty thousand on that wall, and reduces a total sum insured of seven hundred thousand to six hundred and forty thousand.
The cover comes back when the repair is done. Until then, a second event during the same year is working against a smaller ceiling. On a property that has already had one claim and is waiting on a builder, that is a real exposure, and it is a good reason to keep the claim moving.
Slow leaks, and the three thousand dollar limit
House insurance covers sudden accidental damage, not the slow kind. A pipe weeping behind a wall for two years is the most common way a New Zealand house is damaged without anyone noticing, and every insurer writes a narrow exception for it.
AMI covers accidental hidden gradual damage that both first happens and is discovered while the house is insured with AMI. The most it pays in a period of insurance is three thousand dollars.
Two details change how that reads. The cost to repair the cause is not covered, so the pipe or the failed seal is yours to fix. But other parts of the house that are not themselves damaged, and have to be opened up to find or reach the cause, are covered, provided AMI approves the work first.
Three thousand dollars does not go far into a wet wall, and the approval step is a condition rather than a formality. The practical reading is that this benefit helps with a small, early find, and does not rescue a house where the leak has been running for years.
Holiday homes and houses left empty
An empty house is a different risk, because nobody notices a leak, a break-in or a small fire. The AMI wording restricts cover once a house has been unoccupied, and it can change the terms of the policy at that point.
There is a way to keep full cover on a house that is regularly empty, and it is a list of conditions rather than a single tick box. Where AMI has recorded the house as a holiday home, the restriction does not bite provided all of the following are true. The house and grounds are inspected inside and out at least every sixty days by you or someone you nominate. The house, grounds and contents are adequately maintained. Mail is cleared regularly. The water supply is turned off. All doors are locked and all windows are secured.
Turning the water supply off is the one people forget, and it is the one most likely to matter. A burst pipe in an empty house is a large claim, and the condition is written to prevent exactly that.
The restriction ends as soon as you or someone you authorise is living in the house again.
The AMI and State wordings are the same document
AMI Home Plus and State Home Comprehensive are both IAG products, and reading them side by side shows how close they are. Setting the brand and product names aside, the two documents measure 99.89% identical.
That is not a family resemblance. It is the same wording, with AMI written where State appears and Home Plus written where Home Comprehensive appears. The benefits are the same benefits, the limits are the same limits, and the exclusions are the same exclusions.
The practical consequence is worth being blunt about. If you get a quote from AMI and a quote from State and treat that as comparing two policies, you are comparing one policy at two prices. The cover is not the variable. Price, service and how each brand handles a claim are.
It also means a comparison that puts both brands in a table is padding the table. Two of the columns carry the same document, and a reader who does not know that will read the agreement between them as confirmation.
Nothing here says either brand is worse for it. Shared wordings across brands owned by one insurer are ordinary, and it is cheaper to maintain one document than two. The problem is only that two brand names suggest a choice that, in cover terms, is not there.
What costs extra
Four benefits in the Home Plus wording are optional, which means they apply only if your policy schedule shows you bought them.
Additional costs for heritage homes covers the extra expense of rebuilding a house with heritage features to the standard required. Excess-free glass and bathroom fixtures removes the excess on those claims. Lifestyle block fencing extends fencing cover on a larger property. Matching floor coverings pays to replace undamaged floor covering so that a repaired room matches.
That last one is worth understanding, because the gap it fills is the single most common surprise in a house claim. Without it, an insurer pays to replace what was damaged, and not to replace the undamaged half of the same floor so that the two halves match.
What to check before you buy
None of these has a right answer that applies to every house. They are the points where the AMI wording gives a different result depending on something only you know.
Worth having in front of you:
- Which basis of settlement your schedule shows, and if it is Replacement, whether the floor area printed on it is right.
- Whether your retaining walls, pool or crossings are worth more than the caps inside the home sum insured, and whether they are listed as special features.
- Where your sum insured came from and when it was last worked out.
- If the house is ever empty for long, whether you can meet every one of the holiday home conditions, including turning the water off.
- Whether you also hold a State quote, and whether you realise it is the same wording.
- Whether matching floor coverings is worth buying for the rooms you actually have.
Common questions
- Who underwrites AMI house insurance?
- IAG New Zealand. IAG also owns State and NZI, and underwrites house policies sold under several bank brands, so an AMI claim and a State claim are paid by the same company.
- Is AMI Home Plus the same as State Home Comprehensive?
- The wordings are, to the extent that matters. Setting brand and product names aside, the two documents measure 99.89% identical. The benefits, limits and exclusions match. What differs between the brands is price, service and claims handling, not the cover.
- What does the Replacement basis of settlement actually change?
- Where the loss comes from fire or explosion that a natural hazard did not cause, and you repair or rebuild, the limit of your home sum insured does not apply. The cap is the replacement cost up to the floor area shown on your schedule instead. For every other cause, including any natural hazard, the sum insured still applies.
- Are retaining walls covered by AMI?
- Up to fifty thousand dollars for all retaining walls together, and that figure sits inside your home sum insured rather than on top of it. A wall worth more than that has to be listed on your policy schedule as a special feature with its own sum insured.
- How much does AMI pay for temporary accommodation?
- Up to thirty thousand dollars for each event, for each residential dwelling on the schedule, where the house is your main residence. It also pays where a government or local authority orders you to leave because damage is coming, even before the damage happens.