What is Comprehensive Car Insurance in Canada?

For those who don’t know, comprehensive insurance essentially provides coverage to your own vehicle if it’s involved in an accident that isn’t your fault.

For example, if somebody slashes your tires or a severe hailstorm damages your car, pretty much it’ll cover you for most natural events and also damages done to your car when you’re not attended. More examples of what comprehensive car insurance covers can be found below.

• Vandalism
• Stolen vehicle
• Weather damages such as hail, fire, or tornados

It’s a good idea to have both comprehensive and collision coverage as together; these will help you fix and replace your vehicle that has been damaged in an accident across all aspects, including car-on-car accidents and natural occurrences.

However, in the scenarios mentioned above, you can claim most of the costs back used to repair your vehicle, minus your policies deductibles (if there is one).

Many Canadians are unaware of the difference between both comprehensive and collision coverage. Both are optional but provide you with that much-needed added protection.

Comprehensive – As mentioned above, comprehensive insurance covers you for events that cause damage to your car, such as vandalism, weather damages and when your vehicle gets stolen. This isn’t related to if you were involved in an accident that involves another car.

Collision – This is where collision insurance comes in handy, although this doesn’t protect you from the factors that comprehensive insurance covers you for. Instead, this coverage is targeted towards accidents and collisions (as mentioned by the name).

The difference – You can clearly see that comprehensive insurance is more for accidents that are out of your control and don’t include a vehicle. At the same time, collision insurance is aimed towards vehicle collisions.

However, both can be used together to create the ultimate coverage plan for your car. Most, not all, opt-out of collision insurance, but it’s more than worth having if an event like a collision were to occur. If you’re still unsure of whether you should drop collision insurance or not, I will look at it this way.

If the quoted collision insurance is more than 10% of your car’s value (current market value), I wouldn’t suggest purchasing it. But by all means, I would consider getting comprehensive insurance to protect you if your car gets stolen.

Legally, no, you don’t need comprehensive insurance, but it can certainly get you out of a muddle. It could be a rather small scratch/dent or an entirely new bumper. Either way, it can save you hundreds and if not thousands in repair costs for something that happened out of your uncontrol.

So, if you want to play it safe, I would be looking at this type of insurance to ensure you don’t run into an unexpected bill over an accident that may not have been your fault. Typically they come at the worst times, and it would be foolish not to budget for this if you can.