What happens when a Certificate of Automobile Insurance specifies that the policy includes coverages under certain endorsements, when those endorsements never make it onto the policy? The Certificate and OPCF Endorsements Ontario’s standard automobile policy (OAP1) offers a number of forms and endorsements that FSCO approves. One such form is the Certificate of Insurance, which […]
Who am I? The Case of the Named Insured and the Owner
What happens when an auto insurer sends a policy termination notice to the named insured, but the named insured does not own the vehicle insured under the policy? In Ontario (Minister of Finance) v. Traders General Insurance Co. (c.o.b. Aviva Traders), an individual was seriously injured as a passenger in a Hyundai motor vehicle owed by […]
Long term outlook for automobile insurance in Canada
In a recent online article, Canadian Underwriter magazine asked the question, Is the sun setting on auto insurance in Canada? In my view, it may be late afternoon for the automobile insurance market, but I think it will be a while yet before the sun fully sets on this line of business. Although automobile insurance […]
What’s fair when it comes to setting automobile insurance rates? –
Political pressure to keep automobile premiums low is a problem that has bedevilled Ontario insurers for some time now. The problem certainly isn’t new and it isn’t going away. It also crosses party lines. Four years ago, the Liberal government introduced legislation aimed at reducing auto insurance premiums by 15%. That goal was not achieved. […]
Ontario Auto Insurance Topics – insBlogs
It’s been a long time since I last posted on this blog, but to be honest not much has happened with respect to Ontario Auto Insurance. Last spring I wrote about the factors that were actually driving up the cost of auto insurance i.e., distracted driving, vehicle repairs and fraud. That hasn’t changed. None of this was […]
What to do and when?
It’s a Friday afternoon before a long weekend, of course, and you’ve just received a potential SABS priority dispute. A new Application for Accident Benefits arrives on your desk and the claimant alleges that she was in your insured’s vehicle at the time of the accident. Not surprisingly, you have no record of her under […]
SABS Priority Disputes 101: Reflection on Deflection
In our first article in the Priority Dispute Series, I provided an overview of Ontario’s accident benefit priority dispute scheme and the process necessary to pursue and dispute priority. To recap: The priority pecking order is found in subsections 268 (2) to (5.2) of the Insurance Act. All priority disputes are resolved in accordance with a Regulation named Disputes […]
The battle over connected car data has arrived. Insurers are not prepared.
Passenger vehicles are producing unprecedented amounts of data as more and more ‘connected cars’ hit the road. Whoever controls that data could be destined to control the future of auto insurance as well. Canadian insurers have been looking to profit off of so-called ‘telematics’ data since at least 2014 when telematics data collection was in […]