A Toronto man’s car insurance spiked up by $600 after he moved to another neighborhood.
Steven Baker called his insurer, TD Insurance, to inform the company that his postal code had changed after moving from a side street near Ossington Avenue and College Street to a location near St. Clair Avenue and Dufferin Street. He was later informed that his auto insurance increased from $1,950 a year to $2,560.
“I was shocked,” Baker told CBC News in an interview. “I asked them why. Nothing had changed. I hadn’t had any accidents.”
He was later told by his insurer that the increase was due to his new postal code.
“If you look, the two streets, they’re almost identical in terms of the type of neighbourhood and the amount of traffic,” Baker explained.
Baker demanded a proper explanation from a TD Insurance representative, who told him that his new address had more intersections.
“I asked him if he could tell me a neighborhood where I could move to where my insurance rates would go down, and he said Front Street,” he remarked. “That got me a bit upset because that’s all intersections and [Front Street is] much busier than the neighborhood that I moved into.”
CBC reached out to TD Insurance for a comment on Baker’s case, and the company confirmed that risk profiles are tied to a policyholder’s neighborhood.
“Even within small geographic distances, claims rates can vary widely due to a number of factors like traffic density, levels of pedestrian traffic and weather exposure,” TD Bank Group spokesperson Crystal Jongeward said.
