V
videosilva
Guest
Yes I understand 4 months are FREE ! NOW GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK !!
I help set rates for a Major Canadian Insurance Company! Some thoughts . . .
- Thread starter VifferFun
- Start date
Who cares? I would LOVE an insurance policy for my bike where I would be charged only $200 a year and I won't care if the coverege is only $40,000. Why? Because I know that 95% of all motorcycle crashes will not exceed $40,000 in property damages.
So you are saying that we are paying $4,000/year for a supersport because we have a $1 million dollar insurance coverege? WHO CARES, we will never see that $1 million, at least not 99% of us who are bankrolling those huge amounts with our exorbitant monthly payments.
BTW, you insurance wolves still don't get it do ya? We simply pay you because the government forces us to pay you, there are a thousand other things I do which are as dangerous as riding a motorcycle and I have never needed insurance for them. Back in my country I rode motorcycles for 12 years on city streets with NO insurance and look at me now, here I am, healthy and complete.
C'mon Singh, let's not play dumb here, as an insurance agent you pretty well are aware that you guys quote us "$1,500 year" on the phone and we go out and buy our bikes and then 3 months later we find a letter in the mailbox telling us that our premium is "$2,800/year" and that it was a "mistake".
Last edited:
You can call your agent or broker, and I am sure they will happily give you your $0 back in unearned premiums for the winter months, although they might ask you to pay for the stamp to mail such a useless document.
V
videosilva
Guest
Well thank you
It's not me you should be thanking, be grateful you only pay for 6ish moths of insurance for your bike.
Last edited:
The liability coverage is not meant to cover you, but the other people that you might hurt as a result of your riding. Accidents can happen to anyone, and not many people think it will ever happen to them. You are kidding yourself if you don't think it is easy to incur over $1M in damages on our Ontario highways.
Cheers!
No, I have a better idea, why don't we make bike insurance a voluntary thing like in some other countries and watch you and your company miraculously lowering your premiums by 80% and trying to kiss our butts for business.
![Wind]v[ill](/xf/data/avatars/m/15/15026.jpg?1552068087){kind=avatar}
If you bike and another car is a write off, thats already $40,000 without even addressing anyone's injuries. Then you get sued. In the US everyone sues everyone else over even the smallest nudges, no matter how gentle.
My brother nudged another woman's car, she came out, talked, both looked at the bumpers and nothing even to see, then the insurance company calls my brother. Some guys come over to see the damage on my brother's car and his exact words were, "I can kick your car and do more damage than that nudge did". And the woman was threatening to claim injuries for this.
I've already explained the whole 7% profit concept, so if we had to reduce rates by even as much as 10% in a given region we would just close shop. No business survives by giving money away.
I've explained the mandatory insurance is to protect the general public. I think you would be singing a different tune if you were in your home country, were hit by another driver, became a paraplegic and had no insurance payments to support you for the rest of your life.
If insurance were not mandatory here, I wouldn't be driving/riding on the Ontario roadways. Who would support me if someone were to severely injure me?
Last edited:
No argument there... Insurance could be much cheaper. But then again, you get what you pay for. You will have limited coverage and given that everyone is so used to milking the system, people will just have lawsuits against each other.
Mistakes can happen but if you're experiencing this type of problem repeatedly then there must be more to your personal driving history than you are divulging to the representative.
If the truth is being told upfront and you are 100% not in the wrong there are other avenues you can take to have the issues addressed. Insurance Brokers answer directly to RIBO which is the regulating and investigating body for Brokers. Insurance agents (ie State Farm Rep) is regulated by the Superintendant of Insurance. Since I'm not familiar with the way agents are dealt with I can only outline the RIBO investigation process:
When RIBO receives a complaint it is forwarded to a complaints officer who will try and straighten the issue out for the consumer. They also forward the complaint to the Manager of Complaints and Investigations who decides if it falls under the Code of Conduct/Misconduct, Criminal or Financial category. Each category has it's own process that it must go through but eventially thing's trickle down to the discipline committee.
Brokers do not ever want to have to go through these processes and they can have their broker licence suspended, down graded or revoked entirely.
It is in no one's best interest, including the agent or broker, to attempt to deceive a client to make a little extra money in the short term.
You can also choose to ride/drive uninsured as chances are good that the other party in an accident will have their own insurance to pay their bills HOWEVER, that same insurance company will then proceed to take you personally to court to recover their loses.
If you have the ability to look at the basic idea of insurance with an unbiased mind you'd be able to see that it is a good thing. Spreading the loss of a few amoungst the many helps us all.
If the truth is being told upfront and you are 100% not in the wrong there are other avenues you can take to have the issues addressed. Insurance Brokers answer directly to RIBO which is the regulating and investigating body for Brokers. Insurance agents (ie State Farm Rep) is regulated by the Superintendant of Insurance. Since I'm not familiar with the way agents are dealt with I can only outline the RIBO investigation process:
When RIBO receives a complaint it is forwarded to a complaints officer who will try and straighten the issue out for the consumer. They also forward the complaint to the Manager of Complaints and Investigations who decides if it falls under the Code of Conduct/Misconduct, Criminal or Financial category. Each category has it's own process that it must go through but eventially thing's trickle down to the discipline committee.
Brokers do not ever want to have to go through these processes and they can have their broker licence suspended, down graded or revoked entirely.
It is in no one's best interest, including the agent or broker, to attempt to deceive a client to make a little extra money in the short term.
You can also choose to ride/drive uninsured as chances are good that the other party in an accident will have their own insurance to pay their bills HOWEVER, that same insurance company will then proceed to take you personally to court to recover their loses.
If you have the ability to look at the basic idea of insurance with an unbiased mind you'd be able to see that it is a good thing. Spreading the loss of a few amoungst the many helps us all.
V
videosilva
Guest
7% profit eh ? How much were the insurance companies FORCED to lower their rates just a few years ago ?
I could CARE LESS if the insurance company made 1% profit. STOP GOUGING US !
I pay $2000.00 insurance for my car. If I lived in Pickering ( 30 minute drive ) it would be almost half of that ??
For all those WAITING to turn 25 and get that MAGICAL reduction in your insurance rates ITS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN !!!
Last edited:
Off the argumentative topic.......
With reinsurance and retrocessions, do you find there is an average number of companies that are used for this or does it vary from company to company?
Also as a consumer, I'd think it would be in my best interest to be with a company that is better reinsured than another, is there anyway that a consumer could get that type of information from the company?
With reinsurance and retrocessions, do you find there is an average number of companies that are used for this or does it vary from company to company?
Also as a consumer, I'd think it would be in my best interest to be with a company that is better reinsured than another, is there anyway that a consumer could get that type of information from the company?
Good question.
Part of the government regulation (and a fundamental Actuarial principle) requires insurance companies to hold a large fund of money known as a "reserve". Depending on the size of the insurance company, this reserve can be in excess of $1,000,000,000 (that's a BILLION). This large fund of money must be present to ensure that the company has the financial means to pay out any claims that should come their way. A company determines the worst-case situation by performing a DCAT (Dynamic Capital Adequacy Testing) analysis, which essentially simulates the book of business if certain catastrophes were to take place.
Every quarter, the insurance company looks at its historical claims experience and determines whether or not they need to increase or decrease their reserves. An increase in reserves shows up as a loss on the financial statements, and a decrease of reserves shows up as profit on the financial statements. When you look at an Insurance Company that had excellent "profit" last year, it actually could be the case that they had an average year but released reserves, which in turn shows up as income.
Anyways, I think that because of the government and actuarial regulations, you are safe with pretty much any company. The reinsurance is more for the insurance company to try and cap their own losses to make their profit more stable for the shareholders.
If you are concerned about the ability of your insurance company to pay out a claim, you can check out their AM Best rating, which tells you the financial strength of an insurance company:
http://www.ambest.com/
Cheers!
V
videosilva
Guest
There are many people who have no insurance for one reason or another. My point was to illustrate that those "unisured" will still be held responsible on a financial level.
One of the variables used by insurance companies to rate an individual is their "Class", which is in part determined by the age of the principle operator. It is common practice that the Classes with drivers under age 25 are quite pricey, and drivers over 25 are much cheaper. Some companies are also starting to increase your premium somewhat once you hit you senior years because you start to lose your reflexes and the accident frequency increases.
The rate you pay is determined by the experience of the group that you fall into. If the experience of those under 25 is that they cause lots of accidents (which is true), then they will pay higher premiums than people over the age of 25.
Perhaps your insurance company has a different classification that is not based on age 25? They might be opting to use age 30 or something else? You should ble to see what class you were put into by looking at the contract that you received in the mail.
Cheers!
I understand the point you were trying to illustrate regarding lower liability and how a crash can easily exceed $200K if it's serious enough. I'm curious to see what the odds are of actually being involved and at-fault for such an accident in Ontario.
The reason being, I currently pay approx. $4000 in insurance per year. Meaning for a 1 million dollar total payout 1 in 250 people would have to have a MAJOR accident. This doesn't take into account the investing power and interest garnered from the money collected.
So lets say 40% operating expenses/profit to the insurance company, so we're up to 1 in 350 people. I know these numbers are speculative and claims can exceed 1 million dollars in accident benefits etc. (btw what are the financial limits on accident benefits? I thought it was only up to your covered liability???)
If you can dig out that kind of information I'd be highly interested. I'm curious to see if the claim money is being spent on a few HUGE claims or 1000 $100K ones.
BTW I think insurance would work much better if liability was reduced to $200K and everyone had optional personal vehicle+passenger medical coverage. Don't take the coverage? too bad.
Last question, you mentioned earlier if you have $2 million you can insure yourself. If you have $200 000 could you not insure yourself? Also, if accident benefts can exceed $2 million, how come the province says you can insure yourself @ 2 million or am I missing something?
The reason being, I currently pay approx. $4000 in insurance per year. Meaning for a 1 million dollar total payout 1 in 250 people would have to have a MAJOR accident. This doesn't take into account the investing power and interest garnered from the money collected.
So lets say 40% operating expenses/profit to the insurance company, so we're up to 1 in 350 people. I know these numbers are speculative and claims can exceed 1 million dollars in accident benefits etc. (btw what are the financial limits on accident benefits? I thought it was only up to your covered liability???)
If you can dig out that kind of information I'd be highly interested. I'm curious to see if the claim money is being spent on a few HUGE claims or 1000 $100K ones.
BTW I think insurance would work much better if liability was reduced to $200K and everyone had optional personal vehicle+passenger medical coverage. Don't take the coverage? too bad.
Last question, you mentioned earlier if you have $2 million you can insure yourself. If you have $200 000 could you not insure yourself? Also, if accident benefts can exceed $2 million, how come the province says you can insure yourself @ 2 million or am I missing something?
Last edited:
The odds of being in a serious accident also depends on who you are. If you are paying $4000/year, then this means that you are statistically more likely to be in a major accident than someone who is only paying $1000/year. Are you paying $4000/yr for your bike insurance alone? That is definitely quite high. If this is the case, PM me your situation and we can try and understand it better.
I don't know the odds off hand, but I will try and look them up in the industry statistics if I get the time. I do know that the premium is made up by a combination of smaller $50,000ish claims and larger $2Mish claims. I am pretty sure that the majority of total losses come from those under $200K.
I was simply making the point that you are able to self-insure if you have the financial means to do so. I think it is in the $2M range but I am not certain without looking it up. It could be much higher or lower than this figure.
This is something that I do not fully understand yet and would have to ask someone in Claims for a concrete answer. I believe that the losses attributed to Accident Benefits are uncapped. Thus, you could incur a claim that pays out $2M in liability, and $2.5M in Accident benefits (and yes, I have actually seen a claim like this before in Ontario).
Last edited:
matt2312 had asked for some industry statistics, so I went to the work of calculating some for you
My information source is the Insurance Bureau of Canada, who collects statistics for the Canadian Insurance Industry. My calculations are based on all vehicles (including cars, motorcycles, etc.) within all of Canada excluding BC, SK, PQ, and MB. When you read these statistics, be sure that you understand that it is pretty much Canada-wide (the only data I have at this moment). The experience of Ontario is worse than in other regions. In addition, these loss figures do not include the expenses associated with handling the claim. In addition, a single claim likely involves a payout on more than one coverage (for example, an accident could incur losses for Liability, Accident Benefits, and Collision).
Number of Insured Vehicles:
Third Party Liability: 11,108,517
Accident Benefits: 10,999,198
Collision: 6,940,117
Comprehensive: 8,142,648
Number of Claims by Coverage:
Third Party Liability: 323,512
Accident Benefits: 102,915
Collision: 253,498
Comprehensive: 228,582
Total Claims by Coverage:
Third Party Liability: $4,120,365,000
Accident Benefits: $2,363,302,000
Collision: $1,188,753,000
Comprehensive: $606,999,000
Average Cost per CLAIM by Coverage:
Third Party Liability: $12,736
Accident Benefits: $22,964
Collision: $4,689
Comprehensive: $2,655
Average Cost per POLICYHOLDER by Coverage:
Third Party Liability: $371
Accident Benefits: $215
Collision: $171
Comprehensive: $74
Thus, the average payout per policy in Canada is $831 plus expenses plus expected payouts any other coverages you have. Including 27% for expenses, this number is about $1,063 per policy plus expected payouts any other coverages you have. Your premium will be higher or lower than this depending on your age, gender, driving record, location, car/bike, coverage/limits, etc. etc. etc.
Basic Probability that you get into an accident involving Liability: Approx. 2.9%
Basic Probability that you get into an accident involving Accident Benefits: Approx. 0.9%
NOTE: You cannot calculate probabilities for COLL and COMP because they are not mandatory. If a person does not have coverage but is involved in an accident, it would not be recorded as a claim.
With regards to Large Losses, my calculations show the following probabilities for the Ontario Insurance Industry as of 2004. Bear in mind, however, that more realistically a claim involves multiple coverages so the probability that a TOTAL claim would exceed these thresholds would be much higher:
Probability of Bodily Injury claim exceeding $100K: 0.034%
Probability of Bodily Injury claim exceeding $200K: 0.016%
Probability of Bodily Injury claim exceeding $500K: 0.005%
Probability of Accident Benefits claim exceeding $100K: 0.031%
Probability of Accident Benefits claim exceeding $200K: 0.014%
Probability of Accident Benefits claim exceeding $500K: 0.005%
Probability of winning Lotto 649: 0.0000071%
Probability of getting hit by Lightning in the USA: 0.000032% (someone was just hit in Ontario a couple of days ago!)
Also, with regards to Large Losses, my calculations show the following portions of total losses (by coverage) are accounted for by Large Losses exceeding certain thresholds:
Percentage of Total BI Losses due to BI Losses exceeding $100K: 65.4%
Percentage of Total BI Losses due to BI Losses exceeding $200K: 47.7%
Percentage of Total BI Losses due to BI Losses exceeding $500K: 23.1%
Percentage of Total AB Losses due to AB Losses exceeding $100K: 48.6%
Percentage of Total AB Losses due to AB Losses exceeding $200K: 36.2%
Percentage of Total AB Losses due to AB Losses exceeding $500K: 24.8%
It is quite interesting to see that large losses account for over half of the total dollars of insurance payouts on the mandatory coverages of BI and AB.
Cheers!
My information source is the Insurance Bureau of Canada, who collects statistics for the Canadian Insurance Industry. My calculations are based on all vehicles (including cars, motorcycles, etc.) within all of Canada excluding BC, SK, PQ, and MB. When you read these statistics, be sure that you understand that it is pretty much Canada-wide (the only data I have at this moment). The experience of Ontario is worse than in other regions. In addition, these loss figures do not include the expenses associated with handling the claim. In addition, a single claim likely involves a payout on more than one coverage (for example, an accident could incur losses for Liability, Accident Benefits, and Collision).
Number of Insured Vehicles:
Third Party Liability: 11,108,517
Accident Benefits: 10,999,198
Collision: 6,940,117
Comprehensive: 8,142,648
Number of Claims by Coverage:
Third Party Liability: 323,512
Accident Benefits: 102,915
Collision: 253,498
Comprehensive: 228,582
Total Claims by Coverage:
Third Party Liability: $4,120,365,000
Accident Benefits: $2,363,302,000
Collision: $1,188,753,000
Comprehensive: $606,999,000
Average Cost per CLAIM by Coverage:
Third Party Liability: $12,736
Accident Benefits: $22,964
Collision: $4,689
Comprehensive: $2,655
Average Cost per POLICYHOLDER by Coverage:
Third Party Liability: $371
Accident Benefits: $215
Collision: $171
Comprehensive: $74
Thus, the average payout per policy in Canada is $831 plus expenses plus expected payouts any other coverages you have. Including 27% for expenses, this number is about $1,063 per policy plus expected payouts any other coverages you have. Your premium will be higher or lower than this depending on your age, gender, driving record, location, car/bike, coverage/limits, etc. etc. etc.
Basic Probability that you get into an accident involving Liability: Approx. 2.9%
Basic Probability that you get into an accident involving Accident Benefits: Approx. 0.9%
NOTE: You cannot calculate probabilities for COLL and COMP because they are not mandatory. If a person does not have coverage but is involved in an accident, it would not be recorded as a claim.
With regards to Large Losses, my calculations show the following probabilities for the Ontario Insurance Industry as of 2004. Bear in mind, however, that more realistically a claim involves multiple coverages so the probability that a TOTAL claim would exceed these thresholds would be much higher:
Probability of Bodily Injury claim exceeding $100K: 0.034%
Probability of Bodily Injury claim exceeding $200K: 0.016%
Probability of Bodily Injury claim exceeding $500K: 0.005%
Probability of Accident Benefits claim exceeding $100K: 0.031%
Probability of Accident Benefits claim exceeding $200K: 0.014%
Probability of Accident Benefits claim exceeding $500K: 0.005%
Probability of winning Lotto 649: 0.0000071%
Probability of getting hit by Lightning in the USA: 0.000032% (someone was just hit in Ontario a couple of days ago!)
Also, with regards to Large Losses, my calculations show the following portions of total losses (by coverage) are accounted for by Large Losses exceeding certain thresholds:
Percentage of Total BI Losses due to BI Losses exceeding $100K: 65.4%
Percentage of Total BI Losses due to BI Losses exceeding $200K: 47.7%
Percentage of Total BI Losses due to BI Losses exceeding $500K: 23.1%
Percentage of Total AB Losses due to AB Losses exceeding $100K: 48.6%
Percentage of Total AB Losses due to AB Losses exceeding $200K: 36.2%
Percentage of Total AB Losses due to AB Losses exceeding $500K: 24.8%
It is quite interesting to see that large losses account for over half of the total dollars of insurance payouts on the mandatory coverages of BI and AB.
Cheers!
Last edited:
VifferFun...thank you for the useful information and for detailing everything for us.
I know I appreciate your tips and will definitely keep it in mind when I have to revisit my insurer next year!!
What are you gonna do?!? If you wanna ride/drive then you gotta get insurance...that's just the way it is.
I know I appreciate your tips and will definitely keep it in mind when I have to revisit my insurer next year!!
What are you gonna do?!? If you wanna ride/drive then you gotta get insurance...that's just the way it is.
