The NZ insurance industry is banding together to deal with the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake, even as aftershocks continue to rattle the city.

An Insurance Brokers Association of New Zealand (IBANZ) initiative saw more than 100 industry representatives drawn from the broking, insurance and loss adjusting sectors gather in Christchurch last week to co-ordinate their approach to future actions.

IBANZ CEO Gary Young told insuranceNEWS.com.au that last Monday’s meeting was “an opportunity to discuss the issues coming out of the earthquake”.

“We thought it would be a good idea to get all the stakeholders together,” he said. “The earthquake was by far the biggest insured event in NZ – of all time – so from that perspective it raises a lot of issues for the industry going forward.”

He says the closed-doors meeting was not open to the media, but he will soon be able to announce specific results.

“There are a couple of initiatives that we’ll be working on over the next two weeks,” he said. “It was a very good meeting.”

Last Wednesday a magnitude-five shock struck 20km west of Christchurch – the latest of 1500 aftershocks.

Canterbury-based broker, Don Tennant of Rothbury Insurance Brokers, told insuranceNEWS.com.au much of his time is now taken up with processing earthquake claims.

“We’re brokers, but we can’t get on with broking at present,” he said.

Mr Tennant told insuranceNEWS.com.au that he expects to see premiums rising and more business coming from customers seeking to fully insure their properties.

“Everybody’s apprehensive and a bit traumatised, but soldiering on, he said

Meanwhile, the Earthquake Commission has appointed Fletcher Constructions as project manager to co-ordinate repairs of up to $NZ100,000 ($76,000) each on about 50,000 properties.