Auto insurance reform should be sequential, brokers told

Ontario’s auto insurance product needs to be fixed sequentially, not in one big swoop of a reform, said Jean Francois Blais, president and CEO of AXA Canada.
Blais spoke to delegates of Ontario’s Young Broker Council’s conference in Niagara Falls on June 4, 2009.
He said currently Ontario’s auto insurance system is too complex and not functioning properly. “If we have to fix the system with one big brush, it’s not going to work,” he told the YBC delegates.
“It’s too bad that we have this [system in which] every five years we have one reform [of the entire system].”
In Blais’ opinion, the reforms should be focused on adjusting accident benefits and not touch the tort side of the regulation.
“I would not touch anything on tort,” he said. “Not anything. Because we don’t know what the outcome would be.
“Let’s fix accident benefits. Let’s focus on that one thing.”
When addressing the issue of credit scoring, Blais confirmed that AXA Canada supports the use of credit scoring, suggesting that it offers a competitive advantage when underwriting and pricing risks.
“If you want to kill credit scoring, just ask those companies that don’t use it to use it, because if everyone used it, it no longer forms a competitive advantage.”