Canada’s condo insurance market appears to have stabilized but the industry shouldn’t get lulled into the feeling that reforms are no longer needed, said Aaron Sutherland, the vice president of Insurance Bureau of Canada’s (IBC) Pacific region.
Over the past few years, the condo/strata market saw skyrocketing insurance premiums, with British Columbia and Alberta particularly hard-hit. In 2020, condo insurance premiums in B.C. rose on average 40% from the prior year, with anecdotal reports of much larger increases.
Also in B.C. in 2020, IBC introduced a number of measures aimed at addressing affordability of strata insurance. This included amending depreciation report requirements for strata corporations (which would enhance building maintenance requirements) and standardizing the definition of a strata unit.
For example, there was no standard definition of where a unit…
