Cheap Ontario Car Insurance Quotes

How much you pay for insurance depends a lot on your age. Drivers in their teens and early twenties, males especially, pay the highest car insurance premiums. Prices will begin to decrease by your mid-twenties, and the price gap between men and women usually resolves by age 30. Your rates take another dip in your fifties.

Base models tend to fetch lower insurance premiums than cars with luxury trim. This is because basic cars are cheaper to repair and replace. When shopping for a new car, remember to factor in insurance costs when deciding between make and models.

The place you call home affects your rates, down to your postal code. Insurance companies group drivers by geographic location and examine claims activity within those boundaries. Your neighbours affect your rate. More claims equal higher rates, while fewer claims equal lower rates.

Any conviction under Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act will affect your premiums. Think speeding, driving under the influence, and driving without a license. In Ontario, convictions stay on your insurance record for six years, so protect your driving record.

Your insurance history is important. Traffic convictions have a large impact on your insurance history. Failure to pay your premiums on time — or not at all — will also destroy your credibility with your insurer and lead to a massive increase in your premium. It can also result in the cancellation of your policy, which will make finding cheap insurance with another provider nearly impossible.

Another thing that can trigger cancellation driving for a rideshare app without informing your insurer. All rideshare apps offer commercial insurance to drivers, but you're still obligated to let the provider of your personal policy know about your intention to start a new side hustle.

Certain forms of auto insurance coverage are mandatory in Ontario — liability, accident, uninsured driver, and property damage — but you can choose to enhance your policy with a range of products. Adding them will raise your premium. Optional auto insurance in Ontario includes several products that reimburse you for physical damage to your car by circumstances that are not covered in a standard policy.  Another form of optional insurance includes endorsements, which are special contracts that amend a standard policy. For example, some endorsements will protect your premium from rising after your first at-fault accident, and there are ones that ensure depreciation won't be deducted from a claims settlement.

A deductible is an amount you agree to pay before your insurance company chips in. Insurers will lower your premium if you increase a deductible since you’re demonstrating that you're willing to shoulder a greater portion of the cost.

Insurance companies will reward you for giving them more business by bundling your home and auto policies.

In Ontario, insurance companies are allowed to consider your gender and marital status when calculating your premium. Men are viewed as riskier to insure, and their premiums tend to be higher than women's. Nonbinary drivers are offered female rates. Married drivers are perceived as being at lower risk to insure, which might benefit their premium.

Insurance companies have to ensure they have enough in their coffers to meet their obligations to policyholders in the present and future. That’s why insurance companies are among the most fiscally conservative businesses in the financial marketplace. If insurers see that claim settlements are outpacing revenue from premiums (the relationship is tracked using a metric known as the ‘combined ratio’), they will their customers' increase rates.

Ontario is a no-fault insurance province, and while this might sound like it means no one will be found at fault in the event of a collision, it means something altogether different. 

What no-fault actually means is if you are injured in an accident, or your vehicle is damaged, then you deal with your own insurance company when making a claim. By going through your own insurer, you get the financial help you need right away—whether it's for injuries you sustained or for fixing your damaged vehicle—instead of waiting for your insurer and the other drivers' insurers to decide who was to blame for the incident before paying out benefits. 

For more information, please review our guide on The Truth About No-Fault Insurance.

By law, you must carry proof of auto insurance with you when you’re driving, even if you’re not the owner of the car.

Proof of insurance must be stored in the car at all times. If you’re lending someone your car, you must make sure they know the location of the certificate or transfer a digital copy to them.

The fines for not being able to show insurance when stopped by police ranges from $50 to $500 plus surcharges.

A charge of failing to surrender insurance is a separate offence from not having insurance in the first place, or falsifying insurance (the penalty for those ranges from $5,000 to $50,000, plus having your licence suspended and car impounded).

The following forms of proof are acceptable, according to the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA):

• Physical certificate (sometimes called a ‘pink slip’)
• Digital certificate (can be stored on your smart phone)
• An insurance binder (a document that acts as temporary proof of insurance)

If you are involved in an accident resulting in injury or damage, you must report it to a police collision reporting centre within 24 hours and within seven days to your insurance company to file an auto insurance claim, no matter who is at fault.

Failure to do so could result in your insurance company not honouring your claim.

Next, an insurance claims adjuster will be assigned to your case to determine fault. In the insurance world, someone is always partially or fully at fault. This is so insurance companies can determine who pays what damages and that the at-fault driver's premiums are reflected accordingly.

Once fault is determined, payouts will be processed. If you are at fault, your rates may increase upon renewal. If you disagree with the outcome of an insurance investigation, you can contact the claims manager or the insurance company's ombudsperson to help you resolve the issue.

Ontario roads have more cars.

One of the driving factors is that there are simply more cars in Ontario. There were close to 13 million vehicles registered in Ontario in 2019, compared to five million in Alberta and four million in B.C.

It’s simple math: the more cars on the road, the more claims insurers must settle.

And since insurance is a form of pooled risk, other people’s driving behaviour will impact your insurance premium.

Ontario has a hybrid auto insurance system.

Another contributor is Ontario’s auto insurance system. Ontario has a limited no-fault system, which means that drivers can access rich benefits from their insurance provider while also retaining the right to sue for damages in addition to their claims settlement.

In Ontario, drivers will get their liability and medical expenses covered by their own insurance company. Their own insurer will also directly compensate them to get repairs or to replace a car that was damaged by an accident the policyholder was not at fault for.

In pure no-fault systems, drivers get these benefits but do not have the right to sue for additional damages.

In Ontario, you can sue for pain and suffering and economic losses.

Lawsuits raise the cost of claims, which then forces the insurers to raise auto insurance rates

There's a lot of auto insurance fraud.

Another culprit is fraud. Ontario is known as the capital of auto insurance fraud in Canada, and 80% of fraud in the province occurs in the Greater Toronto Area. The prevalence of insurance fraud drives up claims costs and increases premiums for all drivers. Insurance fraud includes everything from exaggerating the extent of damages, and faking collisions, to overbilling on services performed in the event of a claim. It comes from a wide cross-section of contributors, which makes it a complex issue for the province to deal with.

Climate change is taking its toll.

Climate change is also influencing Ontario car insurance rates. Though Ontario doesn’t have severe weather as frequently as Atlantic and Western Canada, two summer storms in 2021 resulted in a combined $205 million in damage. Severe weather also increases the number of claims, which in turn affects everyone’s premiums.

More than 100 insurance companies operate in Ontario, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. However, most car insurance brands you recognize are owned by parent companies ("insurer groups").

When looking at market share (a business metric that measures a company's sales to the total sales within a particular industry), 84% of car insurance sales can be traced to 13 parent companies. The top 10 make up 79% of all sales.

The 13 largest auto insurer groups in Ontario

1) Intact Insurance - Intact’s market share in Ontario was 17.5% in Ontario.

2) Desjardins - In 2021, Desjardins had a market share of 15.7% in Ontario.

3) TD Insurance - In 2021, TD Insurance's share of the Ontario auto insurance market was 10.4%.

4) Aviva - In 2021, Aviva's market share in Ontario was 8.6%.

5) Allstate - In 2021, Allstate had a market share of 8.6% in Ontario.

6) Co-operators - In 2021, The Co-operators had a market share of 7.8% in Ontario.

7) Definity Group - In 2021, Definity Group controlled 7.8% of the Ontario auto insurance market.

8) CAA - In 2021, CAA controlled 4.4% of the Ontario auto insurance market.

9) Travelers - In 2021, Travelers controlled 3% of the Ontario auto insurance market.

10) Wawanesa - In 2021, Wawanesa controlled 3% of the Ontario auto insurance market.

11) RSA Canada - In 2021, RSA Canada controlled 2.3% of the Ontario auto insurance market.

12) Gore Mutual - In 2021, Gore Mutual controlled 1.6% of the Ontario auto insurance market. It does not own any other brands.

13) Northbridge Insurance - In 2021, Northbridge Insurance controlled 1.5% of the Ontario auto insurance market.