Category: Insurance

As noted in recent media reports, the Province has announced (and is enacting) a number of legislative measures that the government intends to mitigate the dramatic increase in insurance premium costs and related deductibles being borne by Strata Corporations since approximately November of last year. We have written about these sudden and significant increases on a number of occasions and recommend the following blog posts for background reading:

• Insurance Market Updates – June 2020
• 2019-2020 Insurance Renewals;
• 2019-2020 Insurance Renewals (Continued)

You can find the full text of the announcement at the Government’s website.

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BFL Canada, a major broker of Strata Corporation insurance policies has published their latest Market Insights, which you can find here.

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We regret to be the ones to share this bad news if you are not already aware, so please try not to shoot the messenger.  Strata Councils and their respective Ownership groups need to be aware that ALL Strata Corporations in and around the Lower Mainland (i.e. all of our clients) should expect to see very significant increases in the premiums they pay for insurance as well as deductibles.  This is a difficult topic to distill into a few bullet points and we will attempt to flesh out the new reality below, but here are some high (or low) lights:

• Premium increases between 20-80% are common, with some outliers on either side;
• Deductibles are increasing significantly- $100,000 is becoming the norm for water damage claims in high-rises;
• This is the result of economic factors both micro and macro in scope;
• You are not alone- this is impacting all Strata Corporations in the Lower Mainland, all Property Management firms and all insurance brokerages;
• Owners found to be “responsible” for a loss will be liable for these new deductibles under most Strata Corporation bylaws;
• We do not profess to provide expertise on insurance, but offer our update below- this has proven to be a very difficult month for Property Managers who are trying their best to assist their clients during what is our busiest time of an always busy year and we appreciate your understanding that this is not of our making and that there is zero money being made by our brokerage related to insurance commissions or the extra work involved in policy renewals. We are offering this memo in our efforts to educate Strata Councils and Ownership groups about the present realities and challenges of the Strata insurance market and will continue to do so at every opportunity.

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We had recently written about the responsibility of a Strata Corporation to Repair & Maintain Strata Lots in various scenarios, and included advice from Clark Wilson LLP on the subject.  

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With the ever-changing nature of global insurance markets and the related moving pieces leading to the local trend of rising premium costs, we have been looking to find unbiased third party articles and information to pass along to keep our clients informed and hopefully help make some sense of this very significant and mandatory operating cost. In this article, we offer some commentary on the insurance renewal process along with some information on the 2013 outlook for Strata Corporation Insurance in British Columbia.

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There were a number of news stories published over the past week regarding a very common practice of Strata Corporations.  The gist goes something like this: most buildings have bylaws which permit the Strata Council to charge back the cost of insurance deductibles (and in practice, amounts below the insurance deductible) to the owner of a suite where damage originates.  The most common example of this is when water flows from one suite to others.  Some feel that this practice is unfair, but it is very common.

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