WTH is OPCF44 "Family Protection Endorsement"?

Re: WTH is OPCF44 "Family Protection Endorsement"?

OKAY! I think I figured it all out finally.

I read up on my insurance policy docs and legislation online, and then got confirmation on some questions I was unsure about over a long chat with my insurer. After 26 years having auto insurance of some kind, I think I get it now. I put everything together in a table to make sure I had it clear in my head as I went along. Maybe this can help others too.



Now I understand what all that insurance lingo means, and where it applies in case of a claim. Terms like 'Direct Comp', or 'Comprehensive Coverage', or 'Medical Benefits' make more sense now. Mandatory coverage in Ontario are the areas shown in green.

The big lesson for me here is that fault determination absolutely matters! It changes everything (as the left column indicates). "No fault insurance" is just an inside baseball term that has absolutely no significance to end users at all. It's actually pretty misleading. No wonder I couldn't get any easy answer from anyone too. This stuff is pretty convoluted compared to the way I always imagined it to work.

More to the point of this thread though, I now understand that the coverage for personal injury to myself or my occupants in the event of a collision that is the fault of an under-insured motorist (the red text in the chart) can be very low. It's not that the coverage is completely missing, just that there's a fair risk that my (or my passenger's) injuries could exceed the at-fault driver's ability to cover them. Then I'd have to try and recover the extra costs from them directly through the courts, which may be money they don't have. That's where OPCF44 comes in. It tops up any meager coverage that the at-fault driver may have to the same level as my own liability coverage, and makes it my insurance company's problem to try and recover the money from them.

So I went and added back OPCF44 and increased my liability to $2 million. Mostly that was to add coverage to myself or my passengers if we were injured by an under-insured driver, but also having read some of the Benefits Schedule, there are a few instances where a particular type of injury automatically entitles the person to a nice round $1 million. That means if I'm responsible for someone's harm, any little accident benefit they need beyond $1 million would come straight out of my pocket. Not saying the type of injury that needs a $1 million benefit is a likely scenario, but the extra $1 million coverage is super cheap so it seems very much worth it.

Re: WTH is OPCF44 "Family Protection Endorsement"?

I really like that chart.

i think there may be an error - in the 'person(s) column (personal injury to yourself) you'd still draw upon accident benefits from your own insurance policy, with any excess claim permitted by law to draw upon the other party's liability coverage, or OPFC44 if they're not insured. Hence the 'no fault' name. And the top left cell in the person(s) column should be green as this is mandatory.

I also beleive that any passengers would also draw upon their own policy's accident benefits if they have an auto insurance policy of their own.

Re: WTH is OPCF44 "Family Protection Endorsement"?

Thanks.

But yeah, there's a limit to the degree of accuracy of the table, like what circumstances this coverage applies or another takes precedence, as in your example. Another example is if I have a claim against an uninsured driver for both bodily injury AND property damage, then some different maths come into the picture which I couldn't be bothered to show there. It's actually a pretty crude overview of auto insurance coverage, but I think it puts all the different coverage types in their proper place in the context of different claims scenarios at least.

The reason the 'basic coverage' area when another driver is at fault isn't green is because the individual policy holder isn't required to buy insurance for that other person. The at-fault party is expected to pay for it themselves. It might actually make more sense to grey out that box since it's not an option for a given policy. I mean in practice it would be possible to be hit by a vehicle that you happen to be paying the insurance for, it's just that it would have to be on a separate policy. I'm sure it's happened before. Either way, the coverage exists regardless of who's paying for the policy, so I left it white. I suppose it would have helped if I had given the table a title!

bottom lines

Carlos Vincent said:

OPCF 44R - FAMILY PROTECTION ENDORSEMENT
This endorsement provides additional benefits for the named insured and other insured persons,
as defined in the endorsement, if the other motorist does not have sufficient insurance to pay the
claim, or should the other motorist be unidentified. The limit of coverage is the difference between
the liability insurance limit of the insurance policy and that carried by the motorist at fault.

Insurance companies have the right to subrogate a third party that caused an insurance loss to the insured.
This is done as a means of recovering the amount of the claim paid by the insurance carrier to the insured for the loss.
If they don't have sufficient protection your insurance company will cover the rest

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