Strata insurance after BC's 2020 reforms

BC’s 2020 strata insurance reforms banned referral fees to managers and required commission disclosure and 30 days’ notice of non-renewal or materially different terms (Province of BC, September 2020). The deductible is a common expense; recovery from a responsible owner follows SPA s.158, current to October 27, 2026.

Key takeaways

• Crisis scale: BCFSA’s June 2020 interim report found premiums up roughly 40% province-wide year-over-year, with deductibles up by as much as triple digits.
• Referral-fee ban: insurers and brokers have been barred from paying referral fees to strata managers since September 10, 2020.
• Disclosure rights: since November 1, 2020, insurance agents must disclose their commission to the strata, and the strata must get at least 30 days’ notice, from the broker or the insurer, of non-renewal or material changes.
• Deductibles stayed high: the province’s current guidance puts strata deductibles at $100,000 to $750,000 or higher, so owners need deductible coverage on their own policies.
• Market today: premiums are falling for parts of the market; FirstService Residential reported a 19% average decrease across its BC renewals in the year to August 2025.

The reforms didn’t cut premiums. They cut the ways a council could be charged without knowing it.

How much did premiums rise?

BC strata premiums rose about 40% in 2019-20. The province reported that BCFSA’s interim report, released June 16, 2020, found strata premiums up approximately 40% province-wide year-over-year, with deductibles seeing up to triple-digit increases. Metro Vancouver ran hotter still, averaging 50% (MLT Aikins’ summary of the interim report). For the more than 1.5 million British Columbians in strata housing, this was not a niche problem.

The distribution mattered as much as the average. Most buildings got bruised; a minority got crushed.

Source: BCFSA interim report, June 16, 2020, as summarized by MLT Aikins.

The deductible side hurt more than the premium side. VISOA’s May 2020 bulletin warned that deductibles of $500,000 or higher had the potential to create unrecoverable losses and cause financial ruin. BCFSA’s final report, Strengthening Foundations, records part of the cause: some stratas had been treating the insurance policy as a de facto maintenance strategy, because filing claims was cheaper than funding repairs. Insurers responded to spreading water losses in denser buildings by raising water-damage and sewer-backup deductibles. A building paying $60,000 in premium in 2019 that landed in the 30-50% band was budgeting $78,000 to $90,000 a year later, with nothing new insured. Councils that missed the renewal letter found out at special-levy time.

What Bill 14 actually changed

What changed with BC strata insurance in 2020?

The main changes came on four dates: a new duty for strata corporations to tell owners about insurance changes in August 2020, a referral-fee ban in September 2020, commission disclosure plus a 30-day notice rule in November 2020, and the end of best-terms pricing on January 1, 2021. A Form B insurance summary followed on April 1, 2023.

Bill 14 is the Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2), 2020, which amended both the Strata Property Act and the Financial Institutions Act. Councils routinely collapse its dates into one.

The referral-fee ban is the reform most often misdated. The province’s September 13, 2020 bulletin declared it effective immediately; BCFSA’s final report records September 10, 2020. November 1 covered the other pair, with penalties for non-disclosure of up to $25,000 for an individual or $50,000 for a corporation.

Best-terms pricing was a subscription-policy practice in which every insurer taking a share of a strata policy got paid at the price set by the highest bid. BCFSA’s final report shows what that cost. In its worked example, a 175-unit strata with $60 million in total insured value drew five bids ranging from 16 to 23 basis points. At own-bid prices the premium would have been about $104,700, but under best-terms pricing every insurer got the 23-point price and the strata paid $138,000.

$33,280 extra: what best-terms pricing cost one 175-unit strata in BCFSA’s worked example.

In BCFSA’s one-month sample of 527 properties, approximately 94% were affected, and about 13% paid 50% more because of the practice. Insurers agreed to end it on BC strata policies by January 1, 2021, and BCFSA later made the ban formal for all BC insurance policies from January 1, 2023 (Regulatory Statement 22-002). BCFSA warned that its elimination would not, on its own, cut premiums.

Two other protections are still not working law. Bill 14 added a cap on the deductible an owner can be charged when the owner is responsible but did nothing wrong (a new Section 158(2.1)), but that subsection has never been brought into force and no cap amount has been set. The June 2020 announcement also promised rules on when full replacement value coverage would not be required; Section 149(4) allows exceptions only “in prescribed circumstances, if any,” and none are prescribed. Treat those protections as announced, not law.

What your renewal disclosure now includes

Renewal review covers insurance adequacy, owner notification and the Form B insurance summary. Section 59(3)(l.2) requires Form B to include a summary of the strata corporation’s insurance coverage, so a buyer can see the deductible picture before making an offer. Bill 14 added this requirement, and it took effect April 1, 2023.

Section 154 gives the strata corporation three standing duties. The first two were already in the Act; Bill 14 added the third, in force August 14, 2020:

1. Review the adequacy of the strata’s insurance every year.
2. Report on the insurance coverage at each AGM.
3. Inform owners and tenants as soon as feasible of any material change in coverage, including any increase in a deductible.

The third duty is the one councils miss. A deductible increase lands mid-term, the broker’s letter goes into a folder, and owners who would have added deductible coverage to their own policies find out only after a loss.

Who pays the deductible?

Who is responsible for the insurance deductible?

The strata corporation pays the deductible as a common expense, and it can recover the money from an owner only when that owner is responsible for the loss.

That is the structure of Section 158:

1. Subsection (1) makes the deductible a common expense.
2. Subsection (2) preserves the right to sue the responsible owner for the money.
3. Subsection (3) lets the council fund it by special levy or from the CRF without an owner vote.

The scale of that exposure is the post-2020 story. The province’s current guidance puts strata deductibles at $100,000 to $750,000 or higher, with earthquake deductibles pegged at 10-20% of full replacement value. No public before-and-after series exists for individual deductible lines; the fair framing is triple-digit increases through 2020, and a six-figure range as the norm today.

Recovery from an owner is not automatic, and the leading illustration predates the reforms. In The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 1589 v. Nacht, 2019 BCSC 1785, a water leak from the Nachts’ apartment caused $87,000 in damage. The strata’s insurer covered the repair, the strata paid its $25,000 deductible, and the council sued the owners to recover it. But the strata’s own bylaw required an owner’s “act, omission, negligence, or carelessness,” so the tribunal demanded proof of negligence, found none, and the BC Supreme Court upheld the result.

The strata’s own bylaw required negligence, so a $25,000 chargeback failed without proof of it.

The lesson runs both directions. A council cannot budget on chargebacks without reading its bylaws first, and an owner cannot count on innocence, because provincial guidance confirms owners can be deemed responsible even when not at fault or negligent. A burst dishwasher hose is the government’s own example.

Deductible coverage on an owner’s policy refers to the endorsement that pays some or all of a strata deductible charged back to that owner. VISOA notes owner insurance is not required by law in BC, but recommends it, because the strata’s policy covers none of this: not contents, not personal liability, not living expenses after a loss, and not the deductible.

Where the market sits in 2025-26

StrataReports’ September 2026 sample puts the median water deductible at $25,000 on 2025 renewals (checked November 6, 2026). FirstService Residential told Business in Vancouver in August 2025 that it had seen a 19% average premium decrease across its BC renewals over the past year, roughly 24% against 2024 once adjusted for rising building values. That is one firm’s portfolio, not a market statistic. BFL Canada noted the last downward rate movement before this was 2018. HUB International’s winter 2024/25 outlook reported significant rate reductions over 2023 and new carrier capacity, with caveats: frame construction still prices above concrete highrise, and loss history, building age, geography, and maintenance still decide individual renewals.

Even in a softening market, insurance is the second-heaviest line on a BC strata budget, after repairs and maintenance. Eli Report’s April 2025 analysis of about 8,000 Canadian condo communities puts average BC strata insurance at $105 per unit per month, against $470 in average strata fees. Management fees average $35 per unit per month. A 50-unit building at the average spends about $63,000 a year on insurance against $21,000 on management.

$105 per unit per month: the BC average for strata insurance (Eli Report, 2025).

A council negotiating hard on its management contract while waving through the renewal has its attention on the wrong line. If you’re rebalancing a budget, benchmark your management fee alongside the insurance line; it takes two minutes.

The receipt: the renewal-review table

Check coverage, commission and deductible exposure before renewal.

Two follow-ups close the loop. Confirm the strata got written notice of any material change at least 30 days before the old policy ended, from the broker or the insurer, and put the insurance report on the next AGM agenda, because Section 154 requires it there anyway.

Check the replacement value too. The Act requires the strata to insure on the basis of full replacement value (Section 149(4)) and to review its insurance every year (Section 154). An insurance appraisal is how that value gets checked. If yours is old, ask the broker whether a new one is due, then compare insurance appraisers near your building. CHOA’s bulletin library goes deeper on each item: 300-899 on broker fees, 200-215 on owners reimbursing deductibles, and 400-039, a full insurance checklist.

Related reading for your council

• Insurance appraisers who work on strata buildings, nearest first: the province’s guidance says insurers often ask for a replacement-cost appraisal done in the past two or three years.
• Strata council duties in BC: the Section 154 insurance duties alongside everything else the Act assigns to council.
• The BC depreciation report guide: the maintenance-funding half of this story; funded buildings stop using claims as a maintenance plan.
• Metro Vancouver management fee benchmarks: where the management line should sit on the same budget.
• Fee increase calculator: what a higher budget, insurance included, means for each owner’s monthly fee.

Sources

Checked against the sources below on November 6, 2026 (BC Laws: Acts current to October 27, 2026; regulations to November 3, 2026). This is general information, not legal advice.

• Strata Property Act, Part 9: insurance
• Province of BC, strata corporation insurance
• StrataReports, water deductibles (September 12, 2026)
• BCFSA, Regulatory Statement 22-002
• BCFSA, Strengthening Foundations report
• MLT Aikins, summary of the 2020 interim report
• Eli Report, “Why are condo fees so different across Canada?” (April 2025)
• Business in Vancouver, premiums falling for some stratas