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According to his calculations, using the latest publicly available data, auto insurance companies in Ontario made $1.5 billion in pre-tax profits in 2016, an increase of $534 million or 57 per cent since 2012. Average claims per vehicle have recently shown declines. In 2011, average claims per vehicle declined by 27 per cent. Lazar suggests the increase in profitability is likely the result of the continuing widening gap since then between premiums and the reductions in claims coverage costs.

Lazar also calculates the average industry return on equity for Ontario for auto insurance companies in 2016 at 15.9 per cent. This is more than three times the 5.1-per-cent level that the regulated profitability should have been if the industry had been using the rolling 10-year average recommended to the regulator, the Financial Services Commission of Ontario.

Meanwhile, car insurance premiums have barely declined. Rather, the go-to narrative that the insurance industry has been spouting for decades now is that there is rampant fraud out there: body shop fraud, rehabilitation fraud, all kinds of fraud. The reason that car insurance premiums are so high is to pay for all that fraud.

That’s a good reason to be angry with fraudsters instead of insurers. But as a personal injury lawyer, I can tell you that there is nowhere near the amount of fraud that the insurance industry wants you to believe. Every day, I see clients in my office who are not sleeping well, not eating well, stressed out if they can’t pay their mortgage or rent that month because they were in a car accident and their rehabilitation and treatment costs were denied. Recently, I represented a woman who needed about $3,500 of rehabilitation treatment to return to work. Instead, the insurance company spent $34,000 in lawyers’ fees to deny her claim in court.