Ontario Insurance Nightmare - No more RH Drives in Ontario?
Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2011 2:48 pm
I want to post a warning to anyone moving from BC (possibly other provinces also) to Ontario with your Delica - don't do it. I moved here for work and a month ago my ICBC insurance was running out, so I decided to bite the bullet and re-register my vehicle here. The Ontario government web site says there are hoops you have to jump through, like getting a "Drive Clean Vehicle Emissions Inspection Report", a "Safety Certificate", and to fill out some tax exception forms. Before you can get Ontario plates you need to get an Ontario driver's license (which is only available in a handful of offices) and to surrender your BC driver's license. (They give you a temporary one, so you lose a piece of photo ID.) Finally in order to get plates you need to get insurance first - and that's where the real insanity begins.
Ontario has a private insurance system - which to you free market capitalists out there should spell better service and lower rates. Ha! You can't actually talk to an insurance company (underwriter) here in Ontario - you need to go through a broker. There are no offices (as far as I can tell) it's all done on the phone, you spend forever on hold, and not all brokers deal with all underwriters. But don't bother - I've talked to 15 different brokers and none of this matters because almost all the insurance underwriters have decided to stop writing policies for right-hand drive vehicles in the last year or so. If you have an existing policy it won't get canceled but nobody wants to write any new ones. Reasons for this stretch from the prejudiced ("it's too old" or "most right-hand drive vehicles here are 'high-performance' racecars") to the Kafkaesque ("the VIN sticker doesn't have the right number of digits , so we can't enter it into our system".)
After weeks of looking I've found two companies: Chubb, which needs you to have at least $2,000,000 of home insurance to be willing to write a vehicle policy; and Desjardins, which insist on seeing a "Narrative Vehicle Appraisal" ($300) and a "Vehicle Condition Report" to make sure you haven't souped up your van into some sort of high-speed deathtrap before they will even consider reviewing your application. This isn't for a comprehensive policy - this is just for liability insurance.
The other thing I've discovered is the insurance industry rules here provide that if you have 3 "incidents" - accident (at fault or not), speeding tickets - even if you're injured in a car someone else is driving - then a company can drop your policy at will. If that happens, or if you have a spotty record or some at fault accidents - then don't even bother to try - you need to get what they call "Facility Insurance" also know as the "insurer of last resort". This used to be a government-mandated program for people that no insurance company would touch, people with multiple impaired driving convictions: now it's the only alternative to the above two companies for Delica drivers. Even though I have a spotless driving record and no at-fault claims in 20 years, an insurance broker from the largest firm in Ontario insisted that this was all she could sell me - I would be paying "several times the Delica's value" every year just for liability coverage. She said: "...of course it would be much cheaper for you to ship your vehicle back to BC, sell it, and buy a nice Grand Caravan - then we'd have no trouble insuring you at all Sir."
Ontario has a private insurance system - which to you free market capitalists out there should spell better service and lower rates. Ha! You can't actually talk to an insurance company (underwriter) here in Ontario - you need to go through a broker. There are no offices (as far as I can tell) it's all done on the phone, you spend forever on hold, and not all brokers deal with all underwriters. But don't bother - I've talked to 15 different brokers and none of this matters because almost all the insurance underwriters have decided to stop writing policies for right-hand drive vehicles in the last year or so. If you have an existing policy it won't get canceled but nobody wants to write any new ones. Reasons for this stretch from the prejudiced ("it's too old" or "most right-hand drive vehicles here are 'high-performance' racecars") to the Kafkaesque ("the VIN sticker doesn't have the right number of digits , so we can't enter it into our system".)
After weeks of looking I've found two companies: Chubb, which needs you to have at least $2,000,000 of home insurance to be willing to write a vehicle policy; and Desjardins, which insist on seeing a "Narrative Vehicle Appraisal" ($300) and a "Vehicle Condition Report" to make sure you haven't souped up your van into some sort of high-speed deathtrap before they will even consider reviewing your application. This isn't for a comprehensive policy - this is just for liability insurance.
The other thing I've discovered is the insurance industry rules here provide that if you have 3 "incidents" - accident (at fault or not), speeding tickets - even if you're injured in a car someone else is driving - then a company can drop your policy at will. If that happens, or if you have a spotty record or some at fault accidents - then don't even bother to try - you need to get what they call "Facility Insurance" also know as the "insurer of last resort". This used to be a government-mandated program for people that no insurance company would touch, people with multiple impaired driving convictions: now it's the only alternative to the above two companies for Delica drivers. Even though I have a spotless driving record and no at-fault claims in 20 years, an insurance broker from the largest firm in Ontario insisted that this was all she could sell me - I would be paying "several times the Delica's value" every year just for liability coverage. She said: "...of course it would be much cheaper for you to ship your vehicle back to BC, sell it, and buy a nice Grand Caravan - then we'd have no trouble insuring you at all Sir."