When Marco Basta bought his first car in 2017 — a Subaru — he was 20 years old and he made a deal with his family. His mother would cover his auto insurance though her policy, but when he turned 27 he would get his own, the same deal they had made with his brother.
Now he’s getting close to that milestone, but he has a clean driving record so he says he’s not that concerned about the cost of getting his own policy.
He should be.
Basta happens to live in the Etobicoke-Lakeshore district and according to the 2021 list of the most expensive Toronto area wards for auto insurance premiums released by ratesdot.ca in January, his postal code has the tenth most expensive auto insurance rates in the area.
Luckily, he doesn’t live in the City of Vaughan, which topped the list as the most expensive city in Ontario for auto insurance premiums in 2021.
With estimated annual premiums of $2,179, Vaughan recently overtook Brampton, where premiums dropped nearly 27 per cent year over year to $1,976 from $2,698.
According to the site, within Vaughan itself the highest premiums are in the Woodbridge and Concord communities, both of which average $2,584 per year.
The City of Toronto proper came in as the seventh most expensive city in the province for auto insurance, with the most expensive postal codes — M3N and M9M — in Humber River-Black Creek.
If you live in any of the most expensive postal codes, you may be wondering if there’s anything you can do to lower your insurance costs — or, for that matter, how insurance companies determine costs in each city, down to the specific ward.
When calculating individual insurance costs, your age, marital status, gender, car model and year, how long you’ve been driving and more is taken into consideration. When it comes to your location, the key factor is how busy the area is.
“Think about how usually higher density or higher traffic density areas tend to see higher insurance rates just based on the fact that there are more cars on the road,” said Tanisha Kishan, a ratesdot.ca expert and chartered insurance professional.
To that end, 2021 actually saw the largest overall decrease in premiums in the province in five years, in part because there were fewer cars on the road because of the pandemic and its ensuing lockdowns.
Kishan said it’s not out of the ordinary to see communities like Vaughan rise in cost due to density, but insurance experts also look at the number of claims made in an area to determine the premium price.
The more accidents and dangerous driving that gets reported in a neighbourhood, the higher the premiums.
Its also important to note that if you’re looking to get insured now, 2022’s estimated premiums from ratesdot.ca are based on the typical insurance costs associated with a 35-year-old driver of a 2018 Honda Civic with a clean driving record.
So if you don’t fit that profile exactly, your premiums won’t necessarily match up with what’s on the list.
The average annual premium across the province is $1,555, a 3.8 per cent decrease from 2020. The average premium for the GTA, including Toronto, is $1,842. Compared to their suburban counterparts, Toronto drivers can expect to pay about six per cent more.
According to Kishan, the cheapest Toronto districts for premiums are still paying around seven per cent more than the provincial average, but at the same time these neighbourhoods experienced a 19.8 per cent reduction in the cost of their premiums in 2021.
For a few years, Basta worked as a delivery driver at a patio furniture store in Vaughan, so he was able to rack up kilometres in “the hundreds of thousands.”
Today, he drives an Infiniti Q50 RS, also from 2017, to and from his job as a site co-ordinator at real estate developer Tridel.
Does he recommend drivers take the same path he did?
“It all depends on the car you drive,” said Basta. “But it’s not a bad thing (to go under your parents’ insurance). We live in a different age, where it’s safe to say everything is a little expensive … Just going out to buy food is expensive, gas is expensive.”
For any parents wondering what to do about their teen’s first foray into driving, Kishan recommends putting them on your insurance as soon as possible.
“Having them on your policy means you’re building their insurance history,” Kishan said. “So it’s a benefit for them.”
In some ways, younger drivers’ insurance costs are stacked against them just by virtue of them being younger. But Kishan does have a few suggestions that might help ease the annual burden.
One possibility is telematics apps, offered by some insurance companies. They are partly usage-based insurance in that the less you drive the more you save, which if you’re in the city and don’t drive a lot may work best for you.
However, the apps also monitor the quality of your driving, so they are only good for your insurance if you’re a good, law-abiding driver.
There’s also winter tires, which besides being a good idea generally, also can save you up to five per cent on premiums.
At the end of the day though, the most important thing is to drive carefully, don’t speed and follow the rules of the road so you don’t get any tickets.
“As you gain more experience, you will start to see that reflected as well in your rates, amongst the other factors that are considered for auto insurance premiums,” Kishan said.
That being said, she does recommend a yearly quote online once you are registered under your own policy, given the variety of insurance options in the province.
That’s certainly something Basta sees himself doing once he finally does make the switch.
“Rates change every year, and so it’s definitely something I’m open to,” he said.
“I think at the end of the day, we just do what’s best for ourselves, right?”
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