Quote:
Originally Posted by ken0042
I'm impressed- it took until 3/4 of the way down until I read one of his stupid nicknames for somebody.
I think I said it before- but I'm fine with this. I pay to be insured; not insured against certain kinds of injuries resulting from car crashes. Tell me what I owe, and send me the bill.
And of course he compares our rate increases with Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Never mind he isn't comparing the actual rates; but the increases. I sure hope when it comes time to compare rates; he either does so with any cities in either province of over 1 million people, or compares rates in cities of comperable sizes; like Brandon to Medicine Hat.
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Speaking outside of the cap issue for a moment, it bothers me when people assume that all provinces are the same all people should be treated equally because that's the feel of the statement. Auto insurance rating is based on a couple of principle foundations, one is VRG which is the rating on your vehicle based on statistics of repairability, collision intensity (other minor things such as engine size etc), and one of the other big factors is territory. Prior industry claims data determines territory rates and each insurance company decides how to break up their territories (some will split cities into quadrants, some would rate a city as whole) it depends on how precise they want to be or can afford to be because of upkeep. For example in Ontario, typically you will find insurers have territories broken to about 50 or 60 and its based on postal codes. It's funny because I know of a town of 10,000 people and they pay practically the same as most Toronto suburbs, why would that be? It's because the people that reside in that area have claims losses equivalent to those from the big city but drive 10km to the next town and you cross a rating territory border where claims data shows lower losses and you pay approximately 40% less (yes very big bucks, worth moving isn't it?). Premium must be commensurate with the potential risk and claims data helps predict the loss amounts so they can determine the base rating in their actuarial office (stats dorks).
I'm no claims expert so I can't jump into the discussion about the cap because I simply am not educated enough on it but when it comes to rates I am more helpful. It seems though that the removal of a cap applies a certain unpredictability over how that could affect the insurance companies, and in panic they are trying to assess the likelihood of claims size thanks to our imperfect law system and overestimating percentages.