Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) earlier this month made changes to its rodent claim policy in an effort to save millions in costs each year.
Details of the changes only recently came to light after
CTV acquired documents.
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MPI’s changes to the policy include having an exterminator handle the rodent trapping process instead of a remediation company, and dropping the requirement for air quality tests for claims, among other changes.
According the documents, MPI is expecting to save $6 million a year through the alterations.
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The insurer had to pay a total of $35.5 million between 2012 and 2015 on thousands of claims related to rodent damage. In 2016, there were 3,763 such claims, which cost the insurer nearly $15 million.
An MPI documents also noted that rodent claims take too much time to settle; the average duration of a claim was 71 days.
“Safety is our first priority, which is why our claim procedures are being aligned in accordance to guidelines established by the public health agency of Canada,” the MPI told
CTV in an email yesterday.
The insurer also said that it has “the most stringent rodent claims policy in Canada” and that the new policy will also be made available online.
Some remediation companies in Manitoba did not take news of the changes well, fearing that they are losing an important source of revenue now that exterminators are being tapped to carry out the car cleaning process.
“It feels like the rug has been pulled out from under us,” Rosanne Montemurro, who owns two remediation companies in Manitoba, told
CTV. “Our business seems to have been given away to another type of business that has not been through the quality control and accreditation we’ve had to go through.”
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