Canadian Direct Insurance

Anyone know what the deal is with these guys? I keep seeing ads for saving up to 20% on car and house insurance by using them…. anyone tried them, and if so, are you saving 20% vs. just using ICBC? Is the coverage not as good or something?

And no, I didn't search the forum to see how many times this question has been asked.

saved way more than 20% when i was with them, seemed helpful enough on the phone, you can pick your coverage, never had a claim so can't comment how good they were for that.

ps. you can get a quote online (i know this is a new concept here), try it!

I got a quote from them on house insurance and it wasn't anywhere near competitive on price with my current coverage due to my house being about 50 yrs old. The guy on the phone said they can offer more competitive rates on newer homes.

I think it's similar to their model for insuring cars. If you have any tickets or accidents over the last couple of years, they won't insure you. They likely assume a newer house has less chance of something going wrong.

I just tried their online quote on the car that's coming up for insurance. It doesn't make any sense to me in that they are quoting close to 900$ less than my current insurance. Do you have to get part of your insurance from ICBC or something?

I just tried their online quote on the car that's coming up for insurance. It doesn't make any sense to me in that they are quoting close to 900$ less than my current insurance. Do you have to get part of your insurance from ICBC or something?

Yes, you still need to get your basic insurance coverage through ICBC.

Yes, you still need to get your basic insurance coverage through ICBC.

Ah. Well that's a pain in the ass.

From my experience their home insurance is excellent.

yeah, with a 43% discount through ICBC and a requirement for basic through them, I just don't see an upside. save a few bucks and then go through a hassle when you have a claim, have 2 bills instead of one…. no thanks for me at this point

I save almost a couple hun a year through them. I buy the basic at any Autoplan dealer and then buy the rest online. Easy peasy.

Never had to do a claim though.

yea until the dinosaur that is ICBC goes away, having to get ur basic throu them and only 3rd party extras throu another its def. not the system we should be able to compare offers for..

ICBC needs to open the insurance game to all comers, but im pretty sure the corp. will never allow that to happen, cuz then their nice fat bonus's will disappear..

yea until the dinosaur that is ICBC goes away, having to get ur basic throu them and only 3rd party extras throu another its def. not the system we should be able to compare offers for..

ICBC needs to open the insurance game to all comers, but im pretty sure the corp. will never allow that to happen, cuz then their nice fat bonus's will disappear..

ICBC can't really go away. Not completely. They have several other aspects to their business that other private insurers do not - driver licensing, vehicle, registration, road safety. You could potentially make the basic insurance side of the business go away, but I think the dilema the province has is without ICBC, there may be cases where some people couldn't get insurance beacuse private insurance companies could pick and choose who they want to insure and some people might not have any insurer agree to insure them.

I know ICBC is replacing a lot of their core business model for how they 'see' the customer, how they underwrite risk associated to that customer and hopefully their insurance options and costs wil be more reflective of the true cost to insure individuals and households - like private insurers do. Maybe at that point, the government would allow basic insurance to be offered by private firms as well.

You could potentially make the basic insurance side of the business go away, but I think the dilema the province has is without ICBC, there may be cases where some people couldn't get insurance beacuse private insurance companies could pick and choose who they want to insure and some people might not have any insurer agree to insure them.

And that's a bad thing why…?