OHTA.ca

After how many days or weeks do insurance companies have access to the information that you've been convicted?

Theoretically, as soon as MTO knows, they could find out. Probably within a couple of days, but I can't say for sure.

they will never find out unless they spend $5 (or whatever it costs) to pull your record from the MTO. as you can imagine, your insurance company has thousands of clients. they aren't going to spend tens of thousands annually to pull the driving record of every client. so if you don't give them a reason to look, chances are they probably won't know you were recently convicted.

in my experience, if you don't "touch" your file at the insurance company so it doesn't come to the top of the pile, your only chance of getting discovered is by random chance. however, if you're changing your addresses, filing claims, making modifications to your policy, odds are they will pull your record just to see what's up.

I too have often wondered about the "right" and laws regarding Insurance companies having access to this information. Aside from telling them yourself when you are renewing or updating a Policy I can't see how they would have "legal" access to this information. Case in point is that one of the Forum members mentions that an Insurance Company can pay $5 to have your records pulled and sent to them. Really? What right do they have to this info and what right does MTO have in selling it???!!!! If this practice is in fact occurring I would be totally baffled if no one has challenged this yet. This is a clear violation of a right to privacy and what makes it all the worse is that MTO would be doing it for nothing more than profit. If anyone has any insight into this matter please post it.

secretsquirrel wrote:I too have often wondered about the "right" and laws regarding Insurance companies having access to this information. Aside from telling them yourself when you are renewing or updating a Policy I can't see how they would have "legal" access to this information. Case in point is that one of the Forum members mentions that an Insurance Company can pay $5 to have your records pulled and sent to them. Really? What right do they have to this info and what right does MTO have in selling it???!!!! If this practice is in fact occurring I would be totally baffled if no one has challenged this yet. This is a clear violation of a right to privacy and what makes it all the worse is that MTO would be doing it for nothing more than profit. If anyone has any insight into this matter please post it.

Most contracts clearly state that you must disclose all convictions and your provider has the right to check your abstract at any time. While you could refuse to disclose this information, I can't imagine any provider would ever insure you. The only way I could see this being a violation of privacy laws would be if the information was just randomly sold. When you enter into a contract with an insurance company, you consent for this information to be shared with them.

secretsquirrel wrote:This is a clear violation of a right to privacy and what makes it all the worse is that MTO would be doing it for nothing more than profit.

It is not a violation of your right to privacy. No one has a "right" to drive. The insurance companies are authorized to obtain that information under the Insurance Act. Don't want insurance companies having access to your driver history? Don't drive. The Financial Services Commission of Ontario oversees the insurance industry and specifically says that driver history is a valid basis for setting insurance rates; however, things like credit history are not.

Think about it: If a driver has numerous convictions and collisions, does it make sense for the insurance company to offer the same rates to that driver as someone who has no crashes and no convictions? We'd all be paying substantially higher rates to keep bad drivers on the road. Of course someone who would pay substantially higher rates would not volunteer their bad driver record to an insurance company unless they had another way of finding out, so the access to information is required.