Vancouver, B.C. — July 17, 2018 — The Insurance Company of British Columbia has had another tough year. After a series of drastic cost-saving measures were taken to protect the public insurer from financial ruin were taken by the new provincial government, B.C. Drivers have had their claims reach record levels.
In a new report, British Columbians are said to have made 350,000 claims in 2017, costing $4.8 billion dollars. Both figures are record-breaking – six percent higher than the 2016 numbers – and it is unclear how the crown corporation will be able to survive.
Ironically, the provincial government had attempted to blame collision repairers for the insurer’s mounting debt. After one former employee came forward with now-debunked claims overcharging had cost the province hundreds-of-millions of dollars, Attorney General David Eby leapt on the story. Even after it had been effectively debunked, the NDP government invested in adding 60 additional insurance estimators to the payroll.
With only 3.5 million drivers in the province, one-in-ten have made claims this year. The vast majority of the collisions occured in the greater Vancouver area, with just 120,000 claims stemming from outside the region.
