Thanks to a spell of house hunting this year, I\u2019ve become familiar with Toka T\u016b Ake EQC\u2019s Naturalhazardsportal.govt.nz<\/a>. It allows you to zoom in on a property and see if it has had a natural hazard claim paid out by EQC. That can uncover risks. What it doesn\u2019t tell you is whether the issue has been fully remediated.<\/p>\n Tower Insurance provided an unexpected eye-opener this year by quietly refusing to offer house insurance to great swaths of hazard-prone homes throughout the country.<\/a> Try to insure a risky home and you get the automated message: \u201cWe\u2019re sorry. The details you\u2019ve given mean that we\u2019re currently unable to offer you cover.\u201d The answer to that isn\u2019t, as a friend of mine said, \u2018ah well, I\u2019ll just insure with AA\u2019. It\u2019s a warning about the direction the entire industry is headed, thanks to climate change. More importantly, if you can\u2019t get insurance, you won\u2019t get a mortgage. <\/p>\n In October the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia conference highlighted to me how far ethical investing has evolved from a few fringe funds in the early 2000s, to mainstream fund managers exercising their power to make the companies they invest in behave better. A series of incremental changes, a few scandals (like the 2016 KiwiSaver weapons controversy<\/a>) and growing awareness of the power of invested money have pushed mainstream fund managers to step up from number crunching to talking seriously about climate action, social impact and responsible investing. That shift was a real eye-opener. You can read more here: <\/p>\nAI can now suggest budgets, savings plans and even investment ideas. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n