ICBC - massive losses - report coming Monday Jan 29
 

Prepare to be absolutely RAPED this year in ICBC rate hikes.

Detailed report of ICBC operations coming this monday.

Mike Smyth: Shocking losses revealed at ICBC, huge rate hikes feared | The Province

NDP forced to make tough choices to avoid $400-a-year rate hike.
British Columbia’s public auto insurer has driven over a financial cliff and the damage is far worse than anyone had feared or predicted.

On Monday, ICBC will announce a staggering projected operating loss of $1.3 billion for the current fiscal year.

That’s more than $1 billion higher than projected just three months ago.

The financial hemorrhaging — the Insurance Corp. of B.C. is losing $3.5 million a day — could force massive premium hikes on B.C. drivers, and possibly tilt next month’s balanced provincial budget into a deficit.

An ICBC “statement of operations” for the nine-month period that ended on Dec. 31 shows a “net loss” of $935 million, and a projected total loss of $1.29 billion by the end of the current fiscal year on March 31.

“ICBC’s year-end loss is now projected to hit $1.3 billion,” says a private briefing note prepared for Attorney General David Eby. “Now, B.C. drivers are looking at a rate hike of at least $400 more in their premiums by next year unless we take immediate action to keep rates more affordable.”

The shocking losses are much higher than what was projected just three months ago, when the fiscal year-end loss was pegged at around $200 million.

“The dramatic increase in losses has been driven by the emergence of many large, extremely costly claims,” the briefing note says.

Eby earlier ordered ICBC to conduct a fresh review of unsettled auto-accident claims, many stretching back years, and provide a financial update to the corporation’s board of directors.

“While the rise in the number of claims and the associated costs are not new issues for ICBC, what has been unexpected is the degree of the cost escalation from these claims and the significant number of older claims — dating as far back as 2010 — that are now extremely costly.”

The ICBC board — chaired by former NDP finance minister Joy MacPhail — got the bad news at a meeting on Thursday that a source described as a “shock-and-awe moment.”

The meeting was told many claims originally classified by ICBC as “minor” have emerged as more complex and costly files known as “large-loss claims,” a category that has grown 80 per cent in the past year, and which cost an average of $450,000 each to settle.

The briefing note prepared for Eby, the minister responsible for ICBC, blamed the previous Liberal government for the mess.

“Years of bad decisions and mismanagement by the former government have meant a fiscally unsustainable position at ICBC,” the briefing note says. “We never expected to find this level of mismanagement by the previous government.”

The New Democrats are slamming the Liberals for not acting on recommendations contained in a 2014 report by consultants Ernst and Young.

The report called on the government to impose a cap on large court-ordered financial awards paid to victims who suffer “minor” soft-tissue injuries like whiplash in auto crashes. British Columbia is the only province in Canada where such awards are still unlimited.

But the Liberal government stripped the controversial recommendation out of the report before passing it on to ICBC.

“The response from government was, ‘We’re not prepared to consider that,’” former Liberal finance minister Mike de Jong told Postmedia. “There was no point presenting it as an option.”

But now the NDP says the Liberals’ inaction has plunged ICBC into a financial crisis.

“If action was taken, this situation could have been prevented,” Eby’s briefing note says.

A source tells me the NDP government now feels it is forced to move forward with the cap on injury claims and several other “aggressive” moves to slow down ICBC’s financial losses.

The measures include a tougher crackdown on distracted driving, expanded red-light cameras at intersections, increased insurance premiums for bad drivers and new rules to prevent ICBC from getting ripped off by price-inflating auto-body repair shops.

The moves will be controversial, and have already sparked a backlash by personal-injury lawyers, who started a campaign to fight financial caps.

“ICBC wants a cap system to solve their financial woes, but punishing victims is not the answer,” says the R.O.A.D. (Rights Over Arbitrary Decisions) B.C. campaign.

But the government said only “drastic” measures will prevent large insurance rate hikes of up to 20 per cent on drivers.

“The amount of basic insurance premiums ICBC is collecting from customers is not covering the increasing amount they are paying out in basic claims costs,” says the Eby briefing note.

The note also slams the Liberals for taking more than $1.2 billion out of ICBC’s accounts and transferring the “excess capital” into government coffers.

“ICBC’s year-end loss is now nearly the amount the former government siphoned out of ICBC while ignoring the needs of B.C. families.”

A government source told me the massive ICBC losses have left Finance Ministry officials scrambling ahead of the provincial budget, to be presented on Feb. 20 by Finance Minister Carole James.

James promised a balanced budget, but the source told me officials are now studying the “implications” of the ICBC losses on the commitment.

Hang on to your wallets. This one could get uglier.


only way out is to join this gang and start selling drugs!
https://postmediavancouversun2.files...rip=all&zoom=2
https://postmediavancouversun2.files...rip=all&zoom=2

Injury claims and hiring people that have no idea what they are doing costs them big time

Haha, graduated with 2 of those scum

They graduated?!?!

3 of the people in the picture have died in the last 30 days.

Of course they have. They are brown.

Bro, das hectic. y u gotta xpose us like dat?

Thanks Christy

friend who works at icbc told me it aint gonna be pretty lol :okay:

Fucking blow up ICBC already ffs..

Like anything has got to be better than the current structure

Source? One of them was killed in a North Van apartment, what about the other two?

Das my boy Rajput!

didn't we get a surplus from the libs last year

oh wait, ndp spent it on making the portmann toll free

oh shit, what happened to portmann when it went toll free, idiots crashing into each other

10k medical claim incoming

I've got an open claim with them from when a red light runner hit me. I will be absolutely incensed if NDP fucks me over.

When are they Planning this rate hike !? Bunch of stinking crooks.

Same picture floating online with 3 people circled saying they are dead.

I think the kid on the far left is this guy.

Teen found in trunk of car is Vancouver?s third murder victim of 2018 | Vancouver Sun

Good. Can't wait for the media to have a field day with this one, and hopefully shine more light on this terrible agency that screws BC drivers day in, day out. Let them burn. I lost all sympathy for ICBC after this article came out:

http://www.news1130.com/2014/04/24/i...vers-licences/

I really don't understand how is it possible that they are having these massive losses with the amount of revenue coming in. Seriously.
Time for private insurance has come.

I don’t know why ICBC lets shops dictate the cost of repairs, my friend’s non-accredited shop can fix any car the same quality as an accredited shop for like 1/3rd the claim amount. What they pay out on damage claims to accredited shops is ridiculous.

Actually I know of a few shops that stopped doing Icbc work period because they don’t pay enough. $73/hr door rate lol. I hope whatever industry your in you charge even a cheaper rate maybe $45

Do you know how much private insurance costs in other provinces?

Based on my age and driving record, a hell of a lot cheaper than here.

I can confirm. I moved to Mississauga from Vancouver and I save $100 per month on car insurance. Mississauga is actually known in the Southern Ontario area as one of the more expensive areas, too.

$300.42 from ICBC for a 2011 Acura TSX, 40% discount and full coverage.
$200.83 from Aviva for the same car with full coverage.

My best friend lives in Niagara and pays just over $1200 per year for a 2013 Tacoma with full coverage as well. Private insurance.

What I like about private insurance is that you can bundle it with renter's insurance for an even bigger discount. And that you get another discount for having snow tires on your vehicle, which IMO is a really good idea. Not to mention the $1200 I save each year gets me a nice vacation.

Btw, neither of us are 25 yet. After that age, that's when the insurance rates really drop....

I was under the impression (based on previous threads) that private insurance premiums would be cheaper (because of increased competition), but it could be painful to get the offending party's insurance company to pay?

Can someone with experience with free-market auto insurance include their 2 cents on getting claims paid?

On average, two of the three highest insurance rates in Canada over the past decade have been the ones with exclusively private insurance (Ontario, Alberta). BC passed Alberta since the Liberals started using crown corporation cash reserves to balance budgets several years ago.

The cheapest insurance is in provinces with public-only or public-private systems, with Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and Saskatchewan routinely the lowest.