Actuarial Notes

Optional benefits: what drivers are keeping and what they’re ditching

By David Gambrill · Canadian Underwriter · 2026

A Canadian Underwriter news article of August 4, 2026 on which accident benefits Ontario drivers kept and dropped after the July 1, 2026 auto reforms made most of them optional. It reports an analysis by MyChoice, an insurtech and comparison site, of more than 1,000 auto insurance quotes generated after the reforms took effect: the premium saved by declining the optional benefits, the share of drivers keeping or dropping each one, and the reasons MyChoice's vice president of product growth gives for the pattern.

Opening

  • Declining all of the newly optional accident benefits saves an average of about 106 a year in premium, about 8.83 a month, by the MyChoice quote data.
  • The article says this is consistent with actuarial figures presented at the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario's IBAO.con the previous October.
  • MyChoice puts a standard Ontario driver's annual premium at $2,132; its CEO, Aren Mirzaian, cautions that the savings should be weighed against the income, caregiving and household costs a driver could face after a serious accident.

What Ontarians are ditching, and why

  • 32.6% of drivers declined every optional accident benefit; the next largest group kept nearly all of them, with few in between.
  • Vitalii Starov of MyChoice links the choice to how little many Ontario cars are driven, and to coverage drivers already hold elsewhere — workers' compensation or life insurance — that overlaps the optional benefits (collateral benefits).
  • The analysis covers quotes, not bound policies, not all of them renewals, for one driver profile: a 35-year-old married driver with a clean record and continuous coverage, in several commonly insured vehicles.
  • With benefits that were optional before the reforms included, the most a driver could save by declining every optional benefit is $301; about two-thirds of the savings came from benefits that were already optional.

Choices Ontario drivers are making

  • Most often kept: death and funeral benefits (about 64% each), damage to personal items (54%), income replacement (52%), and expenses of visitors and the non-earner benefit (about 50%).
  • Most often dropped: the indexation benefit (98%), additional catastrophic medical/rehab (95%), increased medical, rehabilitation and attendant care (93%), caregiver – catastrophic (90%), housekeeping – impairment (89%) and dependant care (86%).
  • Among the newly optional benefits, declining income replacement (400 a week) saves the most, about 47 a year, followed by the 100-a-week home maintenance benefit, about 36.
  • MyChoice notes that lower accident benefit premiums may be offset by higher costs on the tort side of the auto product.

Sources