Co-operators Insurance Co-operators Insurance, www.cooperators.ca, The Co-operators Group, Co-operators Life Insurance Cancelled Insurance After 2 Claims Guelph, Ontario

Our cars and home ( in eastern Ontario) have been insured with Cooperators for the last 41 years . About a week ago we received our 6 month premium renewal in the mail and were shocked to learn that our home insurance would be increasing by a whopping 73% (136% since 2000) .

Over the last 36 years that the house has been insured with Coop, we have had a very small claim following the 1998 ice storm and a second claim for about $45K in 2005 when the house was hit by lightning .

In order to understand the increase and what could be done to decrease it ,we immediately called Coop and requested a meeting with the branch owner . On Monday we met with a sales associate who told as that the factors influencing the increase were:
* house is heated with oil
* potential for sewer backup and basement flooding ( sump pump)
* house is old ( built before 1930)

We were also told that the Coop and other insurance companies are not making sufficient money and will also be increasing premiums , perhaps not as aggressively as the Coop. Head office sets the base premium rate and the local agent just adds any supplementary options requested by the customer , applies the appropriate discounts and deductables and the customers credit score . Our rate fortunately was not affected by a poor credit score or insurance score as they prefer to call it.

Consequently , the only options we had to lower our cost were :
* eliminate the coverage for sewer backup and sump overflows
* increase our deductable

Obviously these had very little impact on the total premiums and were really not worth removing .

One final piece of information which we found very surprising was the fact that the Coop will no longer insure any houses built before 1930. This new rule seems rather peculiar to us since one would think that any house in good condition and having survived for 135 years ( as in our case) would be a reltively low risk.