Brokers along the west coast are selling earthquake coverage at double the deductible and a higher premium – what’s their secret?
“Everybody wants it; nobody wants to pay for it – but they end up paying for it anyway,” says Lynn Zimmerman, a personal lines sales representative with Irwin & Billings Insurance Brokers in Vancouver, B.C. “I’d say about 90 per cent of our clients have earthquake coverage. And that is with the deductible going from 5 to 10 per cent, and the premium going up too.”
Zimmerman believes it was the 7.8 magnitude 2012 Haida Gwaii earthquake in the Queen Charlotte islands that raised awareness and spurred residents along the Pacific coast to buy insurance.
“It was Haida Gwaii that got the ball rolling for a lot of people,” Zimmerman told Insurance Business. “Now earthquake insurance is an easy sell: ‘do you want it or not?’ They almost always do. It is not a hard sell here in Vancouver.”
The news headlines help a lot, she adds, as the massive quake that struck New Zealand still have residents there rebuilding their homes and lives.
“They are still rebuilding in Christchurch (New Zealand),” she says. “It is something that is always in the news.”
The 6.3 magnitude 2011 Christchurch earthquake killed 185 people in that country’s second largest city, becoming one of the nation’s deadliest peacetime disaster.
Although quake insurance may be an easy sell on the west coast, it remains tough for those living in the interior.
In fact, even those clients who have quake coverage and move from Vancouver to the interior, usually end up cancelling their coverage.
“In the (B.C.) interior, nobody has it,” says Zimmerman. “The first thing one client did moving from Vancouver to Kelowna was remove their earthquake coverage.”
