BC drivers to see steep 4.9% insurance hike in 2017

December 20th, 2016  |  Auto

The good news for British Columbia drivers? The BC government wants to make sure long-term insurance increases are in line with inflation. The bad news? They're about to get hit with a major spike.

It was announced today that, pending approval from the British Columbia Utilities Commission, next year's rate increase will be 4.9 per cent. The province's Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, which works in partnership with the public Insurance Corporation of British Columbia to set auto insurance rates, has mandated that a third-party independent review be carried out to help the organizations determine what kind of rates would be reasonable to set going forward.

Their justification for this significant 2017 rate increase has to do with the higher-than-usual amounts of claims and payouts that have been made over the past couple of years. From mid-2015 to mid-2016, vehicle damage claims reportedly increased by 11 per cent while injury claims jumped by 14 per cent. Those figures are compounded by the fact that the average cost of these claims has risen considerably as well, going up by 17 per cent between 2014 and 2015.

BC is one of four provinces in Canada that brokers auto insurance through a mandatory public organization. For more information on those bodies and how they compare to the market in other provinces, check out this article.