Insurance Insecurities: SAAQclic automotive insurance platform deemed ‘a total failure’ according to provincial auditor general report

Quebec City, Quebec — The online Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) SAAQclic system has been deemed a failure that threw Quebec’s automobile insurance board into upheaval, according to a provincial report from Quebec’s auditor general.

Notably, Guylaine Leclerc, auditor general, found that the SAAQ overshot its budget by at least $500 million and has produced a system that ‘still doesn’t work properly.’

“There was no indication that this system functioned correctly,” Leclerc’s office wrote in an official media release on Thursday.

Leclerc further found that in 2017, when the SAAQ first began an attempt to digitize its services, it budgeted $638 million over a ten-year period to build the online SAAQclic platform.

However, eight years later, the true cost of the SAAQ’s digitization attempt is now likely to reach over $1.1 billion, Leclerc found.

While companies and users originally flagged issues with the platform, the SAAQ launched the system anyways.

Finally, Leclerc’s report found that after the launch of SAAQclic, the number of people who travelled to SAAQ outlets actually increased, with the system so difficult to use that it had fewer users than the SAAQ website before SAAQclic was implemented.

Leclerc’s office said it was unable to get an accurate picture of the Crown corporation’s finances for the 2023 financial year.

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