Credit scores can hike home insurance ratesGood scores pay off, say insurers
A credit score is a measure of your financial health, with 300 being the worst and 900 the best. It has traditionally been used by institutions to assess credit risk. Insurance companies argue that people who have strong credit scores will actually benefit.
About 55 per cent of Canada's largest insurers now use credit scoring. And of that segment, 42 per cent did not disclose the practice to customers, according to the Canadian Council of Insurance Regulators.
The Co-operators said it would never deny insurance based on a credit score, and wrote that "without the use of credit score, people with good credit scores the majority of Canadians who we know are less likely to have future claims, would be subsidizing those more likely to have claims."I wonder what they use as cutoffs. Is almost everyone over 680 getting the best rate, like with mortgages? Or would someone with say a 750 score get a better insurance rate than someone with 680?