To Cancel Or Not To Cancel, That Is The Question?

As the riding season nears an end many people are thinking of prepping their bikes for storage and perhaps cancelling their insurance over the Winter, but is that a wise thing?

At BlueCircle Insurance, we often get requests in the Fall to "cancel someone's motorcycle insurance". Of course, we get that everyone wants to save a few dollars where they can, especially in tough economic times, and paying for motorcycle insurance in the Winter might appear to be a waste of your hard earned cash when the bike is just sitting there in your garage or out on your parking pad. The key words there  are "might appear" and though cancelling your insurance might seem like a logical way to reduce expenses, there are multiple reasons to refute the idea.

Five Reasons To Keep Your Motorcycle Insured Year Round

1. You actually won't be saving a whole lot of money, since in Alberta  motorcycle insurance is pro-rated to the riding season and the bulk of the premium is actually used up for what is considered the typical riding season of June, July and August. Those three months account for 60% of your premium, with another 40% used up to cover March, April, May, September and October. There are zero premium savings in November through to February inclusively, so no money saved if you cancel.


2. Your bike still needs to be protected against the event of fire, theft, vandalism or any other accident that might occur while it is parked. No insurance = no coverage, and 100% "risk retention" on your part. A common misconception is that if you cancel your motorcycle insurance and park the bike in your garage your home insurance will cover it instead. Motorcycles and other vehicles are excluded from homeowner’s policies and require their own insurance if you want them to be covered. 


3. Many parts of Alberta experience Chinooks, where the weather gets quite warm no matter the month.  It means you can jump on your bike and go for a ride, even in December or January, if you are properly insured.


4.  Many of the top quality insurance providers, like Travelers and Intact whom are represented by BlueCircle, offer monthly payment plans for your budgeting convenience. It's way easier to spread those payments out over a 12 month period and pay a little in each, rather than get socked with one full payment. In some cases there's no interest charged for this convenience, so why not take advantage.


5. Though it is an indirect influence on premiums, the amount of time to cancel and rewrite policies every Winter and Spring respectively does add up to an expense that inevitably will get passed along to you, the consumer. Cancelling a policy and rewriting again in the next riding season is extra work for the brokers and the insurance company providing the coverage. We all know there is a cost associated with time and we try to do our part to be efficient, keeping that to a minimum and reducing its' influence on the rates. 

In regard to the latter, that philosophy of keeping the bottom line low is critical to the success of any business. If a contractor had to return to every job site to pick up tools he forgot to take after completing his work he'd be wasting his time and fuel, time which would be better spent on doing other work. A couple of hours soon add up to thousands when considering the number of motorcycles involved in our brokerage and that's just at our end. Compound that with the time lost at the other end and pretty soon those expenses will have to be considered in the mix.

With the aforementioned reasons for not cancelling we certainly hope it makes sense for everyone to keep your motorcycle insured year round and properly covered all year long.