MPI considers offering basic services online By: Larry Kusch Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Oct. 15, 2018 Last Modified: 8:26 AM CDT Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018 Updates

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Manitoba Public Insurance clients may eventually have the option of going online for basic business such as renewing their vehicle insurance.

The corporation’s president and CEO, Benjamin Graham, said the corporation currently doesn’t offer any transactions online. He said that needs to change.

“Our customers are demanding it,” he told a Public Utilities Board hearing on Monday.

Graham said 80 per cent of MPI clients would prefer to go online for simple transactions such as informing the corporation of a change in address. Seventy-five per cent would be comfortable renewing their auto insurance policies online, while 35 per cent would like to be able to purchase a new policy this way.

In an interview, Graham said MPI would start by offering “simple basic transactions” online, such as booking a road test or changing an address.

He said he’d like to see that occur as soon as possible, although the corporation would first have to enter into discussions with brokers. The corporation would also have to update its online systems to accommodate such a change. The process could take three years, he said.

Renewing insurance policies online would take place further down the road, Graham said.

Saskatchewan’s public auto insurer, SGI, offers several online services if customers register for an online account, including bill payment, cancelling or renewing licence plates, booking a road test, and changing an address, a spokesman said in an email. With an online account, Saskatchewan residents can submit a collision claim, book an appraisal, take a practice driver’s test, conduct VIN (vehicle identification number) searches, bid on salvage items and locate vehicle parts, among other things.

Graham, accompanied by several senior staff members, appeared before a PUB panel on the first day of hearings into MPI’s 2019-2020 rate application. In June, the corporation announced it was seeking an overall rate increase of 2.2 per cent that would take effect March 1. If approved, the average passenger vehicle owner would pay about $27 more in premiums next year.

MPI said almost all of the increase would be set aside to maintain its rate reserve fund, which is budgeted to be $254 million at the close of the current fiscal year.

The Consumers Association of Canada disputes whether MPI needs to generate an additional $20 million — the amount of revenue to be generated by the proposed rate hike — when the corporation’s reserves already fall well within the parameters set by the PUB.

Gloria Desorcy, executive director of the Manitoba branch of the CAC, said MPI already has a significant reserve to offset unexpected costs. “And now they’re looking for another (amount) above that. That’s totally a concern for us.”

The CAC also questions other business decisions by the corporation, including a plan to write off $20 million in past “ineffective” IT expenditures.

Graham, who was appointed to the corporation’s top job in February, said MPI has learned from its information technology mistakes.

He said no longer will MPI attempt to develop an in-house system designed specifically for its needs. Instead, it will purchase proven technology and adapt its systems to it. “We are not going to be innovators (on IT),” he told the Free Press.

Graham argued that the corporation needs significant reserves in case of unexpectedly high claims or steep drops in investment income. The reserve also backstops longer term liabilities from the corporation’s personal injury protection plan, which the CEO described as “some of the best coverage you’ll see in North America.”

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

Larry Kusch
Legislature reporter

Larry Kusch didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life until he attended a high school newspaper editor’s workshop in Regina in the summer of 1969 and listened to a university student speak glowingly about the journalism program at Carleton University in Ottawa.

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