ICBC Proposed Rate Hike

[nature boy]

[nature boy]

[nature boy]

oh, and:
http://autos.aol.com/article/driving-the-autobahn/

[se7entse7en]

[se7entse7en]

[geForce]

off topic convo continued here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243

[nature boy]

[[JT]]

[joel]

aren't those statistics skewed based on revenue? seeing as the salaries only vary from 200-800k that means the low percentage is mostly due to the fact that the company brings in so much revenue and less affected by their actual salary.

i found this too:
http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2011/sp/p ... y/icbc.pdf

see page 24 to see a financial summary outlook of net income for the past 2 years and the next 3 years:
2009 - 580M, 2010 - 361M, 2011 - 290M, 2012 - 277M, 2013 - 235M

over a 5 year span that's a 1.7 B surplus... hmm... and they want to charge more... it's certainly not because of cost overruns, so then you gotta ask yourself why?

[joel]

I went and took a look at the years prior to 2009 and their net income has not been been under 350M back to 2006. I would check further but I am lazy... it's funny that they always "predict" their future outlook to be much more conservative, but somehow overshoot it by a good 200M or more...

[[JT]]

[nature boy]

whoa, when did this turn into the nerd thread?

i agree that you want the best person for the job so paying extra for top level execs make sense. but i'm starting to think that it might be tough for icbc to budget since any given insured driver could give up their insurance at any time. there's a huge level of unpredictability, but having said that, i still think they're charging too much. but then, i'm no business major or even business savvy for that matter.

i say icbc charges too much compared to the prairie provinces, where they pay about a third of what we do.

[geForce]

I don't understand how ICBC would claim that they are expecting to lose money when they are a monopoly on car insurance in B.C. and plus they have statistics that say 80% of people are at the maximum discount rate. Being at maximum discount rate means that those people are low risk for accidents, meaning less claims, less payouts by ICBC. For the remaining 20%, if you take out drivers that just haven't hit the required timeframe to get to max discount yet, that could mean maybe half or more of that 20% could be low risk as well.

If we're saying that we're paying over $500 million for a CEO that's the "right person for the job", shouldn't he be able to crunch those numbers better than to have an average of $300-500 million surplus each year for 5 or 6 years now while continuing to find ways to raise our rates instead of lowering them? That doesn't seem like a very good CEO at all (at least not for a non-profit corp, but probably good for a profit corp).

[joel]

there's no guarantee they will reduce their basic premium rates and if they start to charge that 3year retroactive traffic violation thing. if you believe what the competitor private companies are saying any more money they make on basic premiums they have been using to subsidizing the rates of the optional premium rates so that competitors cannot compete. so basic goes up and then optional goes down... I don't know how much truth there is to it... but it does seem awfully suspicious.

in any case even if the surplus eventually goes to the government, i don't think icbc should be responsible for general government funding.. insurance money should go to insurance, and tax dollars should go to the government... i can understand some balancing out every now and then but based on that budget document i posted it looks like starting 2010 the government will be doing it every year. this money swapping and figures balancing seems to "flirt" with corruption in my opinion. not that either party is corrupt or doing something wrong... but when a crown corporation is funneling large amounts of extra funding to the government, it seems more than likely that the government will let them get away with more... and it gets to the point where a crown insurance corporation that is made for the people is no longer really serving the people... but perhaps i am getting to conspiracy theorist here...

in any case i just wanted to stir the conversation a bit.

[se7entse7en]

I remember that one year where they raised rates because they lost a bunch of money due to poor investment decisions. That's retarded.