Here’s the thing…
Every car insurance company in Ontario has a cut-off point as to the number of tickets or accidents they might accept per driver.
For example, you might call, say, RBC Insurance for a quote and, as you go along, the agent asks you how many tickets you’ve had in the last three years. There will be some cut-off point where they will not give you a quote. For example, their cut-off point might be three tickets (I don’t know if that’s the actual cut-off point for RBC – I’m just giving an example). So if you have two tickets, they’ll quote you. But if you have three or more, they’ll refuse to quote you. At that point, the agent may tell you that you need to get “facility” insurance.
Facility insurance, eh? What exactly is that?
As you probably know, every car on the road in Ontario is required to have insurance by law. So, technically, an insurance company can’t refuse to insure you. But if you’re not their “ideal” client, they can just insure you through, what is called, the Facility Association.
Insurance of last resort
The Facility Association is like insurance of last resort. It’s basically a pool where all the car insurance companies share the risk of the worst drivers that nobody wants to insure. They expect these drivers to make a lot of claims and they expect to lose money on them. That’s why individual companies don’t want to take on the entire risk. So pooling the risk is the better option.
Now, if an insurance agent or broker told you that you only qualify for Facility insurance, that may not really be the case. There are a handful of “high risk” insurance companies that still may be willing to insure you. You should check with these high risk companies first as, generally, they’ll give you a much better rate than the Facility Association would.
If this is you, give me a call. I deal with all of the high risk companies in Ontario and can get you the best price.
My phone number is 1-888-467-5499.
