# What is going on with car insurance rates in Onratio?



## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

What is going on with car insurance rates in Ontario? For last years , Liberals were announcing that they reduced insurance rates., but Our insurance (Honda Civic 2009 and Toyota Sienna 2006) is suddenly increased by 15.7% (w/o any claims past year). When I called insurance (The Personal), they said that this is because:
- older cars has less safety features , thus insurance is more expensive
- they reduced multi-cars/home discount from 15% to 7.5% in order "to be in line with competitors")
- because increased number of accidents of Honda Civics, other Honda Civic owners should pay for it. Rep also added that this is because Honda Civic is very popular and many cars on the roads - more accidents. (So maybe I should buy very rare car that don't have accidents at all ).

In order to save, rep advised to cancel collision and comprehensive, that we will be paying for our car repairs if accident at out fault, and 3rd party still be covered by insurance.
Thus, we can save $520 annually. Not sure if it make sense to cancel, as we won't have coverage for total lost if "at fault". What do you think?
Is anybody knows website where I can check how much insurance would pay "total lost" for our cars?


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## scorpion_ca (Nov 3, 2014)

Get quotes from other companies such as Brokerlink, Johnson and etc. I never bought collision coverage but I have comprehensive coverage for peace of mind. Do not check quote on websites as they are not often accurate. Speak with the agent and they may apply various discounts with your premium.

I am with Johnson since 2009 and every year I get at least three quotes prior to the renewal of my insurance. I am surprised to see that no other company can match their premium yet.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

It is the same in other provinces. Ours went up considerably in AlLberta after State Farm was bought out. We shopped around. Instead of a significant increase from Direct or whatever they call themselves, it went down considerably with a new carrier. Shop around.

Reconsider your coverage. If you Sienna is damaged the most you will get is the lower of a repair of the market value of the vehicle. You could also up your deductable or take away glass coverage if you have it.


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## agent99 (Sep 11, 2013)

We are with CAA insurance. I don't think our insurance went up. I do know that our 98 car with no collision costs almost same as our 2014 with collision. You get a better rate for multi-vehicles and if you also take out your home insurance with same company. CAA runs their own insurance co.

https://www.caasco.com/Insurance.aspx You should be able to get an on-line quotation.


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

I was checking cars value on http://www.vmrcanada.com
But I don't know if for "total loss" value , i should look at Retail or Wholesale value?


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

Got online quotes with Brokerlink and RBC .... both are much higher that I got from Personal ... tomorrow will try calling Johnson and Travelers


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## Synergy (Mar 18, 2013)

gibor365 said:


> What is going on with car insurance rates in Ontario


The system in Ontario is broken. Insurers are loosing money on automobile underwriting and trying to raise rates. The government may drive some carrier out of the province if they are not careful. Less competition could mean even higher rates. More accidents, too many cars on the road, fraud (medical practitioners, policy holders, lawyers, repair centers, etc), distracted driving, technology in new cars is getting quite expensive to replace / repair. Lawyers, doctors and therapists continue to play games. Accident victims often have unrealistic expectations, feel entitled to VIP treatment ($$) and join in on the games. It's a real mess. 

Shop around, stay clean, move to a region that has lower rates, bundle and purchase cars with favorable rate groups.


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## Synergy (Mar 18, 2013)

Following someone's advice on companies is somewhat futile, that is unless you live in the same location. An insurance company may have favorable rates in one territory and horrible rates in another. Talk to your neighbors.


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

Recently I read article that in Ontario the lowest number of accidents in Canada and the highest premium. kinda doesn't make sense. 



> move to a region that has lower rates


 this is too much . Sell house and buy a new one to save couple of hundreds per year?!


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

Synergy said:


> Following someone's advice on companies is somewhat futile, that is unless you live in the same location. An insurance company may have favorable rates in one territory and horrible rates in another. Talk to your neighbors.


It doesn't depend only on location, but on millions of other factors, like age, driving record, car models and so on...
So with recent increase we got for 2 cars (Honda Civic 2009 and Toyota Sienna 2006) and 1 at fault minor accident (1.5 years ago) in 15 years - $3,400
I got 4 quoute online and the cheapest one was .... $5,719. Insane!


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## Synergy (Mar 18, 2013)

Claim costs are higher in Ontario than other provinces. A lot higher.


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## Synergy (Mar 18, 2013)

You can't control your age:apologetic:

Your location in Ontario has a huge impact. Check rates in the GTA vs a Northern rural community. This is one source of Fraud in the system that some people try to take advantage of.

As stated above by another poster, online quotes are often inaccurate as a result of inputer error - not comparing apples to apples...

Auto insurance is about as screwed up as our health care system is.


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## Jimmy (May 19, 2017)

It is a Liberal racket. First off the insurers were guaranteed ~ 12% returns from a a 20 yr old formula linked to similar bond yields at the time. Next the largest increases in costs have been all the layers of unnecessary and extra Liberal fat bureaucracy pal medical examiners and adjusters which jacks claim prices way up. Plus a little fraud. 

They need to privatize it entirely like home or life insurance. If these insurers had to pay the examiner costs you know they would cut away what wasn't necessary to be competitive.


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

Synergy said:


> You can't control your age:apologetic:
> 
> Your location in Ontario has a huge impact. Check rates in the GTA vs a Northern rural community. This is one source of Fraud in the system that some people try to take advantage of.
> 
> As stated above by another poster, online quotes are often inaccurate as a result of inputer error - not comparing apples to apples...


Sure, you can't control your age, but different companies may have different rates depending on age.
Online quotes are usually much lower than the real one (had this experience when was looking for insurance for my MIL) 



> Auto insurance is about as screwed up as our health care system is.


 definitely agree. All Ontario is a big mess ....hopefully Doug will change at least something


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## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

gibor365 said:


> this is too much . Sell house and buy a new one to save couple of hundreds per year?!


Not hundreds, thousands. Our car insurance for a recent basic model honda Odyssey is < 1000$. And we had a claim on it 2 years ago, although someone else was at fault.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

The highest rates that we ever paid were in BC. Currently our Alberta insurance is $900. for a 2006 Accord, 500 deductable, no glass coverage, two way. Two drivers, pleasure. It costs about $150. to add our 2007 Solara convertable from late May to mid October at the same coverage level. Not sure any more if that if good compared to other provinces (except BC of course) but we shopped and switched carriers last year. BC was awful. The rates for each car were high. We had two vehicles. Each carried it's own full load premium notwithstanding the fact that one can only drive on vehicle at the same time.

Our insurance changed last year when we moved postal zones.


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## Mortgage u/w (Feb 6, 2014)

In QC, insurance rates are very cheap. Partly because we have a 'no fault accident' policy. And partly because we have a coverage included with our plate registration. I have a high end car of the year and a 6 year old SUV. Coverage for both my wife and I is apx $1000.

None-the-less, I constantly seek the cheapest and ensure I change company every 1-2 years. I keep toggling between the same 2 or 3 companies. For some reason, they forget I was ever a client so every time I change, I benefit from 'new client' promos. 

Funny how that works - I am appreciated more as a new client than an existing client.....


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

gibor365 said:


> It doesn't depend only on location, but on millions of other factors, like age, driving record, car models and so on...
> So with recent increase we got for 2 cars (Honda Civic 2009 and Toyota Sienna 2006) and *1 at fault minor accident (1.5 years ago)* in 15 years - $3,400
> I got 4 quoute online and the cheapest one was .... $5,719. Insane!


The bolded in the reason for higher premiums, although the insurance company may not want to tell you that.

You have an insurance rating of 1.........for years driving without a claim. Previously your rating was 10...........10 years of driving without a claim is the highest rating.

Insurance companies have to either raise insurance premiums on drivers with low ratings or raise everyone's rates to compensate.

People shouldn't make claims for minor accidents if they can avoid it.


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## agent99 (Sep 11, 2013)

gibor365 said:


> It doesn't depend only on location, but on millions of other factors, like age, driving record, car models and so on...
> So with recent increase we got for 2 cars (Honda Civic 2009 and Toyota Sienna 2006) and 1 at fault minor accident (1.5 years ago) in 15 years - $3,400
> I got 4 quoute online and the cheapest one was .... $5,719. Insane!


So you didn't follow my advice to get a quotation from CAA? (No need to be a member, but you get a further discount if you are) We pay about $1000 total for two cars ('98 and '14)in an area that is likely lower cost than say GTA. One has no collision, but that doesn't save much.


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

gibor365 said:


> It doesn't depend only on location, but on millions of other factors, like age, driving record, car models and so on...
> So with recent increase we got for 2 cars (Honda Civic 2009 and Toyota Sienna 2006) and 1 at fault minor accident (1.5 years ago) in 15 years - $3,400
> I got 4 quoute online and the cheapest one was .... $5,719. Insane!


At fault accident is brutal on car insurance. You're pretty much stuck.

See if you get any sort of group insurance, most professions and schools have a group rate which get pretty competitive.


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## Synergy (Mar 18, 2013)

1 at fault accident should be a non-issue, that is if one is wise enough to have purchased the accident waiver / forgiveness coverage. You will be stuck with that carrier for another 6 years but at least your rates won't go through the roof....


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

agent99 said:


> So you didn't follow my advice to get a quotation from CAA? (No need to be a member, but you get a further discount if you are) We pay about $1000 total for two cars ('98 and '14)in an area that is likely lower cost than say GTA. One has no collision, but that doesn't save much.


I got quote from CAA and it was much more expensive than current one with The Personal


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

sags said:


> The bolded in the reason for higher premiums, although the insurance company may not want to tell you that.
> 
> You have an insurance rating of 1.........for years driving without a claim. Previously your rating was 10...........10 years of driving without a claim is the highest rating.
> 
> ...


Our rating on one car (on which our son had accident) dropped to 5, on 2nd - still 10. But the point is that we already got last year 20% increase because of accident. This year, The Personal , reduced multi vehicle discount from 15% to 7.5% and increase rates for everyone. I opened similar thread on RFD, and one guy who didn't have at fault accident also got increase by about 15% (like us)



> See if you get any sort of group insurance, most professions and schools have a group rate which get pretty competitive.


 Insurance that we have with Personal is a group insurance.



> 1 at fault accident should be a non-issue, that is if one is wise enough to have purchased the accident waiver / forgiveness coverage. You will be stuck with that carrier for another 6 years but at least your rates won't go through the roof...


 I never checked it (my mistake), After my son had accident, I figured out that we had first accident waiver only on 2nd car


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

Anyhow, as per 10% rule


> For example: If your car is worth $3,000 and you have a $500 deductible, your potential payout would only be $2,500 if your car was totaled and you placed a collision claim. Using the 10 percent rule, if your collision and comprehensive premiums cost $250 or more a year, it's time to consider dropping the coverage


it's not worth to drop collisions as total value of our 2 cars is in the range $9,200 - $11,000 , and saving in insurance $520.

In any case, just signed for Ajusto program (as per rep/website, premium can go down by 25%)
https://www.thepersonal.com/auto-insurance/ajusto


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

agent, the number from CAA

If there are no at fault accidents, they quoted $3,374 (similar to what I got now from Personal)
With 1 at fault accident, it jumps to $6,038!Wow! 80% increase with 1 minor (fender-bender) claim in 15+ years!

P.S. When I lived in Israel I paid for new Fiat (w/o collision) $230 PER YEAR


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## agent99 (Sep 11, 2013)

gibor365 said:


> agent, the number from CAA
> 
> If there are no at fault accidents, they quoted $3,374 (similar to what I got now from Personal)
> With 1 at fault accident, it jumps to $6,038!Wow! 80% increase with 1 minor (fender-bender) claim in 15+ years!
> ...


So what is the difference? 
- one older claim when my daughter was driving one of our cars years ago. 
- smaller claim more recently when I scraped a fender backing out of garage.
- two vehicles with CAA. One is a 2014 Mercedes with full insurance, the other a 1998 without collision. Not much saving by eliminating collision because liability is higher on older cars. 
- mileage is max of 12k km per year per car
- cars are garaged. 
- kingston area, likely lower cost than GTA. 
- two senior drivers with clean driving records. No other drivers.
- 15% discount because cars have GPS gizmos to monitor driving habits
- No recent speeding or other tickets
- Total premium for both cars <$1000 pa.

By the way, we were at one time with The Personal/ (Desjardin). We had a mini-van hit us while in the USA. Major damage to our vehicle. The Personal were totally unhelpful. All they would do was arrange for an adjuster to inspect our car - timing indefinite. Meanwhile we were stranded. Had to find a hotel, rental car etc while we waited. In the end, I personally made a 3rd party claim against the other driver (Hartford Insurance). He had admitted guilt at scene of accident. The Hartford paid us out fair value for our vehicle (wrote if off), paid for our hotel ,living expenses for a week plus airfare for us and our baggage back to Canada. Not long after we dumped The Personal - Totally unhelpful and even rude to us on phone.


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## Earl (Apr 5, 2016)

Well my rate stayed roughly the same this year despite a (very big) speeding ticket a year ago. So ha!

Also I'm surprised they consider 09 and 06 cars old, those cars are new enough to have side impact airbags, abs, traction control, crumple zones, etc. If you run winter tires, make sure they know it, I get a discount for that.


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