Risk-based insurance pricing and te ao Māori

This paper works towards the goal of understanding the implications of increasingly risk-based insurance pricing on te ao Māori, and is a work-in-progress draft intended for a policy audience without prior content knowledge. Our approach involved tīma hui alongside the surveying of relevant literature, and we utilise thinking on diverse economies, whai rawa – māori economies, whakaoranga – marae resilience, and huringa āhuarangi, huringa oranga – a changing climate, a changing livelihood. Literature is surveyed under the following categories: te ao Māori – Māori values, Te Ōhanga Māori – Conceptions of Māori economies, Tūraru – Indigenous conceptions of risk, and Aotearoa Rīanga – Insurance in New Zealand. The latter section includes description of Māori resilience in an unwieldy market, including self-insurance and novel iwi-led business models for marae insurance. We then describe the expected changes to insurance, namely a shift to more obvious risk-based pricing for flood-prone properties and assets. Lastly, weaving these strands of mahi, we present initial whakaaro of the impact of these expected insurance changes for te ao Māori. We find principally that while increased risk-based insurance pricing directly impacts only those aspects of māoritanga which are insurable and insured, there is still clear potential for it to exacerbate inequalities, both directly and indirectly.