Ontario auto insurers have been involved in intentional, industry-wide violations of rules around fair access to coverage, the sector’s regulator said Thursday.
“Insurers chose to engage in non-transparent and illegal practices that made it more difficult for certain types of consumers to get auto insurance quotes,” it said in the report. “We’ve identified that there were embedded non-transparent practices within all the 12 major insurers in Ontario, which meant that consumers couldn’t be confident that they were actually getting the best price available.”
The issue of screening out some customers also extended to aggregator websites, where companies set rules around approval that weren’t necessarily OK’d by the regulator. While most took action, the FSRA found two Aviva Group subsidiaries continued with non-compliant actions.