Victoria, British Columbia — The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) is gearing up for the launch of its hotly debated no-fault claims platform on Saturday, following months of criticism from the province’s legal community.
The platform, which ICBC expects will save drivers as much as $400 per year, is seen by those within the company as an effective solution for avoiding the high costs of the legal system.
“A big part of the savings in the new system is the fact that we won’t be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on litigation,” said ICBC president and CEO Nicholas Jimenez.
By removing the right of the injured party to file a lawsuit for damages and loss of wages, ICBC’s new policy treats both the victim and the at-fault driver almost exactly the same; a point that the B.C. Trial Lawyers Association successfully argued against in front of the provincial supreme court in March.
“The whole point of insurance is the many providing for the few,” Stratford Underwriting president and CEO Colin Brown told CTV News.
“The few being those that need the money—and they’ve taken that aspect of it away.”
Brown was there at the beginning of ICBC in 1971, and he says he is not a fan of no-fault models and the restrictions they imply.
“It is a lot easier since they’re a monopoly,” he said.
“They have control over the so-called ‘basic’ and if they say this is all now in basic, then so it is.”
