ICBC rethinks how it calculates your rates
Posted May 15, 2012 6:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – ICBC will be hosting several open houses to hear your opinion on the way it sets premiums for basic car insurance.
Drivers have told the insurance corporation that low risk drivers should pay less and high risk drivers should pay more.
Steve Crombie with ICBC says the province-wide consultation will give their customers a number of different options to be heard. At the end of the open house sessions, he says two thirds of ICBC’s customers could end up paying less for insurance and one third could end up paying more.
“We’ve had a good system in place for decades, but we’ve seen on average about 10 per cent of our drivers getting into an asphalt crash per year and 90 per cent are improving on the scale of not having crashes,” he explains. “You can have up to three crashes without having to pay more insurance premium so our customers have said that’s not fair.”
As a result, the province as well as the BC Utilities Commission have asked ICBC to look at the system.
ICBC will be examining a number of topics such as driving experience, crash history and serious driving violations.
“Those are risk factors to determine whether somebody has a high risk to have a future accident and if somebody has a number of accidents compared to somebody who doesn’t, we think the person who doesn’t have a number of accidents should pay less,” he says.
Currently, insurance premiums are based on the car ownership. That means, if someone borrows a car that’s insured in your name and crashes it, it will affect your insurance. Crombie admits the system isn’t as fair as it could be.
Eight out of 10 drivers in the province have a maximum discount on their insurance, which is 43 per cent.
The open house will visit 12 cities throughout BC. To learn more visits publicengagement.icbc.com
