What is a sum insured calculator?
A sum insured calculator helps you estimate rebuild costs for your home if it was completely destroyed, known as a total loss. This means rebuilding your house from the ground up after a major event, like a fire, flood, or earthquake. Your sum insured should reflect the full cost to rebuild your home to its current size and standard, using today’s building costs.
Sum Insured vs. Replacement Policy
Before the Christchurch earthquakes, most policies didn’t have a sum insured. Insurers would rebuild your home to its original size, whatever the cost. After the earthquakes, limits were introduced to manage disaster risk better.
Some insurers now offer uncapped replacement again – but only for fire.
For most other events (like earthquakes), the sum insured still applies. Because natural disasters cause most total house losses in NZ, it’s vital to have an accurate sum insured.
