Average Cost of Insurance in Canada (2026): Prices & Trends

The average cost of insurance in Canada is a number that misleads. A household spends about $3,570 a year on it — but that figure blends five products moving in opposite directions. Home insurance is up 45% since 2019; life insurance has actually gotten cheaper. There is no single “insurance inflation” rate, because the forces pushing each policy — auto theft, climate catastrophe, longevity, drug costs — have nothing to do with one another. Every figure below is sourced to Statistics Canada, CLHIA or the Insurance Bureau of Canada; figures we calculated are labelled (InsuranceXpert analysis).

What does the average Canadian household actually spend on insurance?

About $3,570 a year — roughly $298 a month, or just under $10 a day. That is the sum of what Statistics Canada’s Survey of Household Spending records the average household paying across its insurance lines in 2023, and it is the closest thing to an honest “average cost of insurance in Canada” that exists.

Insurance line	Average per household (2023)
Vehicle insurance	$1,126
Homeowners’ insurance	$1,025
Private health insurance	$755
Life insurance premiums	$566
Tenants’ insurance	$98
Core insurance total	$3,570
Mortgage default insurance (lender product)	$381

Source: Statistics Canada, Survey of Household Spending 2023, Table 11-10-0222-01. The homeowners’ and tenants’ figures are both national all-household averages, which is why they sum meaningfully across the whole population.

Our math: at $3,570, insurance is about 3.3% of the $108,225 the average household spends in total each year (InsuranceXpert analysis). It is not the biggest line in a family budget, but it is one of the most quietly relentless — and, as the next section shows, one part of it is climbing far faster than the rest.

A note on why this looks lower than the premiums you see quoted: a car policy averages roughly $2,068 in Ontario, yet the household vehicle line is only $1,126. Both are correct. The household figure spreads each premium across all households, including the ones with no car and the renters with no home — so it is the right number for “what an average household spends,” and the per-policy figure is the right number for “what a policyholder pays.”

Source: Statistics Canada, Survey of Household Spending 2023 (Table 11-10-0222-01).

Which insurance is rising fastest in Canada?

Home insurance, by a wide margin — and it is the only line rising fast enough to matter. Ranked by how much prices actually moved over the six years to December 2025:

Rank	Insurance	Price change 2019–2025	vs all-items CPI (+21.0%)	Annualised
1	Home insurance	+45.0%	+24.0 pts	~6.4%/yr
2	Vehicle insurance	+23.9%	+2.9 pts	~3.6%/yr
—	All consumer prices	+21.0%	—	~3.2%/yr
3	Private health	rising with drug costs*	—	—
4	Travel medical	broadly flat (age-priced)	—	—
5	Life insurance	−8.7% (household spend)	below inflation	falling

*Source: Statistics Canada, cat. 11-621-M2026007 (home and vehicle insurance CPI) and Survey of Household Spending (life). Health premiums track medical-cost inflation; StatCan does not publish a clean standalone private-health CPI.

What the number hides: home insurance did not just rise — it rose 2.1× as fast as everything else Canadians buy (45.0% against the 21.0% all-items CPI), and nearly twice as fast as car insurance (InsuranceXpert analysis). Vehicle insurance, the line people complain about most, actually stayed within about 3 points of general inflation over the full period. Strip out home insurance and there is barely an insurance-inflation story at all.

This is the spine of the whole topic: “insurance is getting expensive in Canada” is really “home insurance is getting expensive,” and the reason has almost nothing to do with the people paying for it.

Source: Statistics Canada, cat. 11-621-M2026007 (home & vehicle insurance CPI); all-items CPI same period.

How fast have insurance prices risen each year?

Home insurance rose in every single year from 2015 to 2025 — car insurance did not. The year-by-year Consumer Price Index tells a sharper story than any cumulative figure: home premiums climbed steadily at 3–8% a year without a single decline, while vehicle premiums actually fell in 2021 and 2022 before surging.

Year	Home insurance	Vehicle insurance	All prices (CPI)
2019	+5.9%	+7.6%	+2.0%
2020	+5.6%	+6.0%	+0.7%
2021	+5.1%	−3.4%	+3.4%
2022	+7.5%	−0.1%	+6.8%
2023	+7.6%	+4.5%	+3.9%
2024	+7.7%	+8.1%	+2.4%
2025	+5.1%	+6.9%	+2.1%

Source: Statistics Canada, Table 18-10-0005-01 (annual-average CPI, year-over-year change).

Two things jump out. Home insurance never stopped rising — its smallest annual increase in the past decade was 3.1%, and it beat general inflation in nine years out of ten. Vehicle insurance is the opposite pattern: it dipped during the pandemic (fewer kilometres driven, fewer claims), then whipsawed back with an 8.1% jump in 2024 as auto theft and repair costs took over.

Reality check: over the full decade, home insurance prices rose 72% — about 2.4× the 30% rise in all consumer prices — while vehicle insurance rose 39% (Statistics Canada; InsuranceXpert analysis). The 2024 crossover, where car (+8.1%) briefly outran home (+7.7%), is the exception that proves the rule: it took a once-in-a-generation theft wave for auto to catch a single year of home’s relentless climb.

Source: Statistics Canada, Table 18-10-0005-01 (annual-average CPI). Home insurance rose every single year.

Why is home insurance the real story?

Because it is repricing to cover climate catastrophe, not household risk. Insured losses from severe weather hit a record $8.5 billion in Canada in 2024 — roughly 6.5× the 2019 figure — and water damage is now the single largest home claim, about 40% of claims at an average near $23,550 each (Insurance Bureau of Canada).

An insurer facing that has to reprice the entire book, so a homeowner who never files a claim still pays for the wildfire, flood and hail seasons. That is a fundamentally different mechanism from the rest of the market: your home-insurance premium is rising because of what the climate did, not what you did. It is also why the increase has no obvious ceiling — the loss years are getting worse, not better.

Reality check: the average water-damage claim of ~$23,550 is roughly 17× a typical annual home premium (InsuranceXpert analysis). One flooded basement costs an insurer what one household pays in nearly two decades — which is the arithmetic behind a 45% price rise.

Why did car insurance rise less than people think?

It rose 23.9% over six years — barely above the 21.0% general-inflation rate — even though it is the premium Canadians grumble about most. The main pressure is auto theft, which cost the industry roughly $1.5 billion in claims in 2023, but its effect on the medium-term price trend has been modest next to home insurance.

There is a real recent twist worth stating plainly: on a single-year basis, car insurance has started catching up. The crossover is clean in the data:

Insurance	2019–2025 cumulative	2025 single year
Home	+45.0%	+5.1%
Vehicle	+23.9%	+6.9%

Source: Statistics Canada — cumulative from cat. 11-621-M2026007; 2025 annual-average from CPI table 18-10-0005.

Over the full six years, home repriced almost twice as hard. But in 2025 alone, vehicle insurance rose faster than home, as the theft surge and repair-cost inflation fed through. The two lines are converging — auto accelerating from below, home decelerating from a much higher base. Which one is “the problem” depends entirely on the window you pick, which is exactly the kind of choice the methodology section below is about.

Why is life insurance getting cheaper?

Two forces pull it down while everything else goes up. First, term-life pricing has genuinely fallen for years: Canadians live longer, so the risk an insurer is covering has dropped, and online competition has compressed margins. Second, demand is soft because the product is badly misunderstood — under-30s overestimate the cost of a $250,000 policy by 10–12× (LIMRA), so many never buy.

The spending data captures it cleanly. Household life-insurance premiums fell 8.7%, from $620 to $566, between 2021 and 2023 — the only insurance line in the survey to decline while home, auto and health all rose (Statistics Canada; InsuranceXpert analysis).

The catch: this is the one insurance most Canadians would benefit from buying more of, and it is the one getting cheaper — 31% of adults, about 8.4 million people, say they carry less life cover than they need (LIMRA). The market is sending a price signal that almost nobody is acting on.

What about health and travel insurance?

Private health is a large and quietly growing cost; travel is small and priced by age, not inflation. Canada’s private health insurers paid $53.3 billion in supplementary benefits in 2024 — drugs and dental are more than half of it — and the average household spends about $755 a year on private health premiums (CLHIA; StatCan). Roughly two in three Canadians have some supplementary health coverage, most of it through an employer.

Travel medical sits apart from the whole inflation question: it is priced by the traveller’s age and trip length, not by a market-wide rate, so it does not “rise” in the way home or auto premiums do. A healthy under-40 can cover a short US trip for $30–$50; a snowbird in their seventies pays several hundred dollars for a winter — a spread driven by age, not by any year’s price index.

Does insurance cost vary by where you live?

Only the property kinds. Where you live can nearly double your car or home premium — but it makes no difference at all to your life or health insurance. This is the same divide that runs through the whole page: property insurance is priced on physical, local risk, while life and health are priced on the person.

Car insurance is the most geographic of all, because it is regulated province by province. The spread is close to 2× end to end:

Province	Average car premium	System
Ontario	~$2,068	Private
Alberta	~$1,818	Private
British Columbia	~$1,522	Public (ICBC)
Nova Scotia	~$1,259	Private
Manitoba	~$1,235	Public (MPI)
Quebec	~$1,044	Hybrid (public injury + private)

Source: Statistics Canada / IBC, Dec 2024. Ontario’s regulator (FSRA) reported the provincial average nearer $2,164 by late 2025 as rates rose further.

Home insurance varies too, but on a different axis — catastrophe exposure, not regulation. Wildfire and flood risk push the western provinces to the top and leave Atlantic Canada cheapest:

Province	Average home premium
Alberta	~$1,396	priciest — wildfire & hail
British Columbia	~$1,284	flood & wildfire
Ontario	~$1,176
Quebec	~$918
Nova Scotia	~$744
Prince Edward Island	~$726	cheapest

Source: MyChoice 2025 home-insurance study. These are quote-platform figures and run below broker “typical” estimates of $1,200–$1,500; treat them as a reliable ranking more than exact averages — see the methodology note on why home figures disagree.

What the number hides: Alberta homeowners pay about 1.9× what Islanders pay for the same coverage, and the gap is widening as catastrophe losses concentrate in the west (InsuranceXpert analysis). Meanwhile a 35-year-old buying $500,000 of term life pays the same in Charlottetown as in Calgary — life insurance has no postal-code factor at all.

Which Canadian cities have the most expensive car insurance?

Within Ontario, a Toronto driver pays roughly twice what an Ottawa driver pays — about $2,044 against $1,027 — for the same profile. Dense, high-theft, high-litigation urban cores sit at the top; smaller cities sit well below.

City (Ontario)	Annual premium
Toronto	$2,044
Brampton	$1,957
Markham	$1,730
Mississauga	$1,588
Hamilton	$1,539
Ottawa	$1,027

Source: Ratehub, 2024. These are quotes for one standard profile (a clean-record driver), not averages of what every resident pays — so read them as the relative gap between cities, not an exact bill.

We deliberately show only Ontario here. Cross-city comparisons are honest only within a private market: in British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan basic auto comes from a public monopoly, so “the average Vancouver premium” isn’t set the way a Toronto one is, and city figures floating around for those provinces mix incompatible systems.

How big is Canada’s insurance industry?

On the order of $276 billion a year in premiums and contributions — but the two halves are measured differently. Property & casualty insurers (car, home, commercial) took in about $107.8 billion in insurance revenue in 2024. Life & health insurers collected roughly $168 billion in premiums and annuity contributions, and paid out $143.3 billion in benefits (MSA Research; CLHIA).

Segment	Headline figure (2024)	Basis
P&C insurers	$107.8B	Insurance revenue
Life & health insurers	$168B	Premiums + annuity contributions
Life & health benefits paid	$143.3B	Claims + retirement benefits
Life insurance in force	$6 trillion	Coverage held
Canadians with life cover	23 million	~56% of population

Sources: MSA Research (P&C); CLHIA “Canadian Life & Health Insurance Facts,” 2025 edition (2024 data).

Our math: combining the two premium figures gives about $275.8 billion, or roughly $6,662 per Canadian flowing to insurers each year (InsuranceXpert analysis). Treat that as an order-of-magnitude figure, not a hard number — for the reason the methodology section explains next.

Methodology: why do “insurance cost” figures disagree?

Every number in this space is measured on a different basis, and mixing them is how misleading “average insurance cost” claims get made. The four traps:

• Per-household vs per-policy. The Survey of Household Spending averages each premium across all households, so vehicle insurance shows as $1,126 — well below the ~$2,068 an Ontario policyholder pays. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions. A “$1,126 average car insurance” headline built on the household line would badly understate what a driver actually pays.
• P&C revenue vs L&H premiums-and-annuities. You cannot simply add $107.8B and $168B. The P&C figure is insurance revenue; the life & health figure includes annuity and retirement contributions, which are savings flows, not risk premiums. Our ~$276B combined total is deliberately labelled as our own rough analysis, not an official industry number — because no official number combines them.
• Cumulative vs single-year change. Home insurance is “up 45%” over six years but “up ~5.1%” in 2025 alone; vehicle is “up 23.9%” over six years but “up ~6.9%” in 2025. A page that quotes a six-year rise for one line and a one-year rise for another — as many do — can make either look like the bigger problem. We hold the window constant when we rank.
• Benefits paid vs premiums collected. Insurers paid $143.3B in life & health benefits but collected $168B in premiums and contributions. Both are real; they measure money going out versus money coming in, and quoting one as “the size of the industry” tells only half the story.

Where a single sourced figure does not exist — the total household insurance bill, the combined industry premium, the per-capita figure — we derive it transparently by summing sourced numbers and label it InsuranceXpert analysis. We never invent a data point for a year or a line we have no source for.

Related statistics

• Car insurance statistics in Canada
• Home insurance statistics in Canada
• Life insurance statistics in Canada
• Health insurance statistics in Canada
• Travel insurance statistics in Canada

To see how the companies behind these premiums score on coverage, financial strength and real customer sentiment, see our insurance company ratings.

Using these statistics

You are welcome to cite these figures with a link back to this page. Please reference the original source (Statistics Canada, CLHIA, IBC or MSA Research as noted). Figures labelled InsuranceXpert analysis are our own calculations on those sources — if you want the working behind any of them, ask us and we will send it.