Our two children, aged 23 and 25, have finally moved house and to another city. They’ve been occasional drivers in our car insurance policy since they started driving and now have full G licenses and five-star ratings, but no cars. By removing them from our policy, the annual premium for our two cars drops from $ 3,000 to $ 2,000. But if my children are not in the policy, will they be treated as new drivers when they finally buy cars and have their own insurance? Will they have to pay much more expensive premiums? My understanding has always been that if someone is not listed on an insurance policy for even one day, the insurance company will pronounce them as non-drivers and return to a beginner rating for their history. – Mark, Toronto
Absence may not make your insurance company’s heart grow more affectionate, but in Ontario, at least, they can’t oppose you. If you have had car insurance before and then choose to stop being insured, for example, because you sold your car and decided to take the traffic, you will not have to start from scratch as a new driver if you re-hire ‘said the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC).
“There is legislation in Ontario that prohibits them from using expiration of insurance coverage to increase insurance premiums,” said Rob de Pruis, IBC’s national director of consumer and industry relations. “There are exceptions if you have lost coverage for very specific reasons, such as a suspended license or fraud.”
Although the rules vary by province, insurance companies may base your premium on certain risk factors. In Ontario, these include the frequency and distance you drive, your age, your gender, where you live, and your driving history, de Pruis said.
In general, companies do not disclose how much weight they give to each factor.
When it comes to your driving history, companies typically rate you based on how many driving convictions, such as speeding fines, and fault collisions you’ve had over the past six years.
In Ontario, if you’ve had a clean driving history for the past six years, you’ll get a five-star rating. The star rating has different names, depending on the province.
While accidents and culpable tickets may reduce your star rating, a gap in your insurance coverage will not be in Ontario, Pruis said.
Therefore, if you sold your car in 2017, were uninsured for five years, and did not have an accident or fault ticket during that time, you will not lose that rating.
The car you are insuring also matters. Insurance companies set rates for vehicles primarily by consulting the claims and safety data of other cars of the same make, model and year.
And newer drivers tend to pay more. Therefore, a 25-year-old in Ontario with a five-star rating will pay more for the insurance of a Honda CR-V 2020 than a 40-year-old with the same rating.
Mind the Gap?
But in most other provinces, insurance companies may consider taking a longer break when it comes to setting rates, though that doesn’t mean you’re considered a new driver, de Pruis said.
“In Alberta, a lapse of more than two years could have an impact on your premiums,” he said, adding that it is difficult to predict how many premiums could be higher because many factors drive insurance calculations.
In all three provinces with government-owned insurance companies (British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba), drivers get discounts over the years they have driven without tickets or collisions due to fault, even if they did not have insurance coverage.
“A driver does not have to have an actively registered vehicle or an insurance policy to continue winning [experience] points for each year of incident-free driving, “Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI) spokesman Tyler McMurchy said in an email.” However, the driver must have a valid driver’s license, not suspended or expired. to keep earning points “.
Do you have a driving question? Send it to globedrive@globeandmail.com and please put “Driving Concerns” in the subject line. Canada is a great place, so let us know where you are so we can find the answer for your city and province.