Thread by @youseepeeYYC

@Isuckatpicking Want to know why rates are all going up almost in lockstep?

This will take a couple of tweets to explain.

In short: you’re paying for climate change.

@Isuckatpicking The insurance industry is sort-of pyramid shaped. Small brokers sell insurance from small insurance companies, but small insurance companies need insurance too. So they get insurance from bigger companies to limit their own risk, just in case.

@Isuckatpicking Follow that shape,& in essence, everyone’s insurance ends up being insured by a handful of very large players at the top who may as well only offer insurance to insurance companies.

This is the shape that this industry has evolved into over many decades. It was stable.

@Isuckatpicking But then some things started happening that started being very expensive. Those stable profits that these very wealthy companies had been relying on—and using to invest in the giant casino we call the stock market—were becoming less stable.
Expensive disasters demanded payouts.

@Isuckatpicking So the people at the top started increase their rates to maintain their profits, which meant passing those costs down to the next level and the next and so on and so on until those costs reached you.

It’s sort of like trickle-down economics!

@Isuckatpicking What are those high cost events for the insurance industry?

We’re talkin, the Fort Mac fire, the Fort Mac flood, the crazy hailstorm in Calgary, hurricanes on the coast. The California Wildfires, the Australian wildfires.

These are all worsened by climate change.

@Isuckatpicking When a jurisdiction, like Alberta, has a cap on how quickly insurance rates can increase, it is very important to profits that those caps be removed.

Once the #UCP won the 2019 election, IBC was quick to congratulate him.

newswire.ca/news-releases/…🔗

theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/…🔗

@Isuckatpicking Now, in Alberta at least, the insurance industry is in an existential crisis.

Expect them to fight with everything they have to block the NDP from forming government again.

edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/…