Alberta's Auto Insurance Won’t Be Discussed

The province of Alberta’s Superintendent of Insurance, Dennis Gartner, has announced that there will be no discussion on their auto insurance rate grid. The Alberta Automobile Insurance Rate Board’s premium review that is now underway for province will not affect auto insurance for the cities of Edmonton and Calgary per Gartner.

Gartner told the Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta, IBAA, that the auto insurance rates would remain the same. There has been some call from insurers to adjust the auto insurance premium rates for the two cities, but they are not going to. He said that they would also not be changing the “all-comers rule” which states that car insurance companies have to offer coverage to anyone who wants it, no matter how old they are, or what their sex or marital status is.

The rate board is having their annual adjustment consultation meeting, and they do this every year to determine what changes need to be made across the province in auto insurance rates. They started this three years ago when they did major auto insurance reform in Alberta, and the grid that they created sets maximums for what can be charged for auto insurance.

They hold the meetings annually to ensure that the auto insurance rates are where they should be, and to see if they should be adjusted up or down accordingly. They focus on loss trends, accident benefit costs, third party liability costs, etc. and then determine auto insurance rates from all of those factors. They take submissions from the auto insurance companies and then discuss whether or not to apply their suggestions, and in the case of raising rates in Edmonton and Calgary they will not be doing so.

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