Who MAS is, and why the structure matters
MAS is a New Zealand mutual. That means it is owned by its members, the people it insures, rather than by shareholders. It has been insuring professionals and their households since 1921, and it carries its own risk rather than passing it to another underwriter.
A mutual answers to its members rather than to a share price, and it does not have to widen its membership to grow. Whether that produces better service is not something this site can measure. What it clearly does produce, in this wording, is a set of limits noticeably higher than the rest of the market.
That pattern is set out in the next section, with the figures, because it is checkable. It is not a recommendation. A higher limit costs money, and whether the extra is worth it depends on your house and your budget.
The limits sit above the rest of the market
Eight New Zealand house wordings were read for this site. On several benefits the MAS figures are not slightly higher. They are multiples.
Retaining walls are the clearest case. MAS covers all retaining walls at the property up to one hundred thousand dollars for an event. The other wordings read for this site run from twenty five thousand to fifty thousand. On a sloping section that difference is real money.
Legal liability for property damage is ten million dollars. Two million is the figure most New Zealand house policies carry, and the one exception among the others is Tower and Trade Me at twenty million.
Hidden gradual loss is five thousand dollars, against one to three thousand elsewhere. Landscaping is five thousand, against one thousand to two thousand five hundred. The sustainability upgrade is twenty thousand, against fifteen thousand. Keys and locks is two thousand, against five hundred to one thousand at most other entry and mid levels.
A few benefits also simply exist here and not elsewhere. Emergency entry pays for the damage emergency services do getting into your house. Replenishing your own fire-fighting equipment is a named benefit. So is a twenty thousand dollar payment to your estate where you die in the accident that damaged the property.
Alternative accommodation is the one figure to read carefully rather than admire. Fifty thousand dollars is generous, but it is a total rather than a per-event limit, shared across every MAS policy you hold, and where two claims are running at once it is fifty thousand for both combined.
The one benefit that pays to fix the cause
Every New Zealand house policy read for this site excludes gradual damage and then writes a narrow exception back in for a hidden leak. Every one of them also refuses to pay for repairing whatever leaked.
That refusal is consistent and it is the part that hurts. Tower will not pay to fix the pipe. AMI and State say the same. AA calls its version a contribution and excludes the pipe, the tank and the waste disposal. Initio says plainly that it will not pay the cost of searching for or repairing the source.
MAS is written the other way. The wording says it will also pay for the costs you reasonably incur to locate and repair the hidden gradual loss, including damage to property that was undamaged, where the work was authorised before it was done.
That is a genuinely different promise. It means the plumber finding the leak and the plumber fixing the leak are both inside the benefit, not just the wet timber afterwards.
The limit is still five thousand dollars for the term, and the authorisation step is a real condition rather than a formality. But within that ceiling the cover does something the rest of the market does not.
What is included as standard
These are the automatic additional benefits in the MAS wording. Unless a benefit says otherwise, the wording states that these sub-limits are in addition to the policy sum insured rather than carved out of it.
That is worth pausing on. A benefit paid on top of the sum insured genuinely adds cover. A benefit paid out of it is a labelled slice of the money you already had.
| Benefit | What it covers | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Retaining walls | All retaining walls at the property, including the cost of repairing or rebuilding them. | $100,000 per eventThe highest retaining wall limit of the eight wordings read for this site. A different figure can be set on the schedule. |
| Legal liability, property damage | What you owe others for damaging their assets. | $10 million per eventFive times the $2 million most New Zealand house policies carry. |
| Legal liability, bodily injury | Liability for injuring a person, capped separately. | $1 million per eventThe whole of your liability cover, including costs and expenses, shares a $10 million ceiling for any event. |
| Alternative accommodation | Somewhere else to live while the house cannot be lived in. | $50,000 in totalShared across every MAS policy you hold. Paid until the house is proven habitable, and combined at $50,000 across all claims running at once. |
| Emergency evacuation | Accommodation costs where an authority or the police move you out. | $50,000 during the termCapped at 30 days from the first notification, and subject to the alternative accommodation conditions. |
| Hidden gradual loss | Damage from a hidden leak, the work to locate it, and the work to repair the cause. | $5,000 during the termThis is the outlier. Most wordings pay for the damage and exclude fixing the cause. This one pays for both, where the work is authorised first. |
| Landscaping | Replanting or repairing lawns, flowers, trees, hedges and shrubs damaged by the same event. | $5,000 per eventAlso covers other reasonable landscaping costs at the address, which is broader wording than most. |
| Accidental death | A payment to your estate where you die in a sudden accidental event that also damaged the property. | $20,000 during the termDivided equally between estates where more than one person is entitled. |
| Sustainability upgrade | Rebuilding with approved sustainable products where repair is uneconomic. | $20,000You have to have been living in the house at the time. You can rebuild on the same site or a different one. |
| New structure | A new structure being built at the address, and the materials for it. | $20,000 during the termNothing where the work is worth more than $20,000, alters or extends the existing house, digs deeper than a metre, or lacks a required consent. |
| Keys and locks | Replacing keys and locks where keys are lost, stolen or copied without your consent. | $2,000 per eventNo excess on your first claim in the term. Later claims in the same term carry one. |
| Emergency entry | Damage caused by emergency services getting into the house. | $10,000 per eventA benefit most wordings do not name at all. |
| Fire-fighting equipment | Replenishing your own equipment after using it to protect the house. | $10,000 per event |
| Tree removal | Removing a fallen tree, including the stump down to ground level. | $2,000 per eventNothing where the tree was already unsound, or where what is left is secure and not going to fall. |
| Empty house excess | What applies once MAS has agreed to continue cover on a house nobody is living in. | $5,000 additionalFor burglary, theft, attempted theft or malicious damage, and only where the listed protection measures are not all in place. |
Empty houses, and the conditions attached
Where a house is going to be unoccupied, the wording expects you to tell MAS. If they agree to continue the policy, a set of conditions applies automatically.
An additional five thousand dollar excess applies to loss caused by burglary, theft, attempted theft or malicious persons, unless all of the protection measures listed in the wording are in place. Meeting them is what removes the extra excess.
The structure is worth noticing, because it puts the decision back on you. The extra excess is not a penalty for the house being empty. It is what applies when the house is empty and unprotected.
Telling the insurer first is the part people skip, and it is the part the clause is built around. A house that quietly went empty without a conversation is in a weaker position than one that went empty with an agreement.
How a claim is settled, and who repairs it
The wording uses a square-metre area as well as a sum insured, and it offers an Agreed Value option where the most payable is the figure shown on the schedule.
The floor area matters for the same reason it matters on the AMI and State wordings. It is a check on the rebuild, and it has to describe the house as it stands rather than as it was when you bought it. An extension nobody told the insurer about leaves the wrong number on file.
One clause stands out for a different reason. Where MAS accepts a claim and the property is repairable, the wording says you are entitled to select a repairer.
That is not universal. Several New Zealand insurers manage repairs through their own panel of builders, which is efficient and can be faster, but it removes a choice. Being told in the wording that the choice is yours is a small thing that becomes a large one when you have a builder you trust.
Ten million dollars of liability cover
Legal liability on a house policy covers what you owe someone else when something you own damages their property or injures them.
MAS covers property damage to ten million dollars for any event, and bodily injury to one million. The total for all legal liability for one event, including costs and expenses and across every MAS policy you hold, is ten million.
Two million dollars is the usual New Zealand figure, and it is what AA, Cove, AMI, State and Initio all carry. Tower and Trade Me carry twenty million. So MAS sits well above the middle of the market without being the highest.
Injury to people is worth a word of explanation. New Zealand has ACC, which handles personal injury and largely removes the right to sue for it, so bodily injury cover on a house policy does much less work here than the same words would do overseas. The property damage figure is the one that matters most.
Natural hazards and the Commission
The premium on a MAS house policy includes a levy paid to Toka TΕ« Ake, the Natural Hazards Commission, in the same way every New Zealand household policy covering fire does.
That levy buys the first layer of natural hazard cover on your house. Earthquake, flood, landslip, volcanic activity, tsunami and hydrothermal activity are the hazards it deals with, up to the limits set in law. Your private policy sits above it and covers the rest.
You do not deal with the Commission yourself. You claim with MAS and MAS handles the split, which is how every New Zealand insurer now works and a considerable improvement on the arrangement that followed the Canterbury earthquakes.
What the scheme does not reach is the parts of a property that are not the house. Drains, driveways, paths, fences and pools sit outside it, and the private policy is what decides whether they are covered and on what terms.
Land is the harder gap. Damage to land itself is largely the Commissionβs territory in New Zealand, within its own limits, and private house policies generally stop at the building. On a hillside that matters, and it is not something any private wording read for this site solves.
What the policy does not cover
The general exclusions in the MAS wording are the ones common across the market, and none of them will surprise anyone who has read another house policy.
Wear, tear and gradual deterioration are excluded outside the hidden gradual loss benefit. Faulty workmanship is excluded, which puts a bad repair back on the tradesperson. Damage that existed before the policy started is excluded, and so is damage that was expected rather than sudden.
The new structure benefit carries its own list, and it is narrow. Nothing where the building works including materials and labour are worth more than twenty thousand dollars. Nothing that alters or adds to the existing house. Nothing involving excavation more than a metre deep. Nothing lacking a required building consent. And nothing where the new structure is not appurtenant to the house, which means it has to belong to the house rather than stand on its own account.
The wording also asks you to tell MAS about any new structure so it can be insured at renewal. That is a condition worth acting on rather than filing, because a structure nobody was told about is a structure the policy has not been priced for.
Tree removal has a condition attached that catches people. Nothing is payable where the tree was unsound and unstable before the event and needed removing anyway, or where the part still standing is secure and not going to fall.
What to check before you buy
These are the places where the MAS wording gives a different answer depending on your house and your circumstances.
Worth settling first:
- Whether you are eligible. MAS has historically insured particular professions and their households, so the first question is whether you can buy it at all.
- Whether the square-metre area on your schedule matches the house as it stands today.
- That alternative accommodation is fifty thousand dollars in total across your policies, not per event.
- Whether you would tell MAS before the house goes empty, and whether you can meet the protection measures that avoid the extra excess.
- What your retaining walls would cost, against a limit of one hundred thousand dollars.
- That the hidden gradual benefit needs the work authorised before it starts, which means a phone call before the plumber begins.
Common questions
- Who underwrites MAS house insurance?
- MAS itself. It is a New Zealand mutual, owned by its members, and it carries its own risk rather than passing it to another insurer.
- Does MAS pay to fix the pipe that leaked?
- The wording says it will pay the costs you reasonably incur to locate and repair a hidden gradual loss, including damage to property that was not itself damaged, where the work was authorised first. That is unusual. Every other wording read for this site pays for the damage and excludes repairing the cause. The limit is five thousand dollars for the term.
- How much does MAS cover retaining walls for?
- Up to one hundred thousand dollars in total for all retaining walls at the property for any event, unless a different figure is specified on the schedule. That is the highest retaining wall limit among the eight New Zealand house wordings read for this site.
- Can I choose my own builder on a MAS claim?
- The wording says that where a claim is accepted and the property is repairable, you are entitled to select a repairer. Several New Zealand insurers manage repairs through their own panel instead.
- Is MAS more expensive than other insurers?
- This site publishes no premiums, so that cannot be answered here. What can be said is that the limits in this wording are consistently higher than the rest of the market, and higher limits are not usually free.