Bradford is preparing to dive into a new pool that could possibly save the town $1.94 million.
Based on a report from Vanessa Morum, the town’s manager of legal, risk and insurance, as well as a presentation from Ryan Durrell, chief information officer and principal broker at Axxima, actuarial and insurance management advisors, committee of the whole recommended council approve the town becoming a founding subscriber to the County of Simcoe’s insurance pool, during the regular meeting on Feb. 18.
That’s intended to allow municipalities in the county to group their resources in the hopes of sharing risk and reducing costs by about 10 per cent, with a further 9.2-per-cent savings deferred to create a buffer. The plan is similar to the insurance pools created by Waterloo Region in 1998 and Durham Region in 2000 — both of which remain in operation with stable membership, according to the report.
“We’re going to save money,” Mayor James Leduc said. “There is a savings here, and I’m a huge supporter of self insurance.”
That was echoed by Ward 3 Coun. Ben Verkaik who said “mathematically, this makes so much sense.”
Durrell explained the savings could actually be even greater as there is “a fair number of moving parts,” and the analysis was “extremely” conservative.
“We always wanted to promise something we could deliver confidently,” he said.
In Bradford’s case, that’s projected to save about $1.94 million in direct insurance costs over five years.
In her report, Morum explained Bradford has experienced “significant” increases to premiums in the last several years, due to its growth, an increase nationally in claims related to “catastrophic” events such as floods and forest fires, and limited competition among insurance providers.
In 2024, Bradford’s municipal insurance rate reportedly increased 8.5 per cent, following an increase of 14.5 per cent in 2023.
After the town took on the roughly $400,000 insurance cost for the South Simcoe Police Service in 2025, the town’s premium was estimated to be about $1.9 million, but under the pool that’s expected to decrease to about $1.66 million.
Bradford is set to join several other municipalities in the pool — including Oro-Medonte, Orillia, Springwater, Collingwood, Midland, New Tecumseth, Penetanguishene and Innisfil — with Durrell explaining more than half of all county municipalities have agreed to join.
Durrell explained the pool doesn't need to be restricted to just the county and members can later choose to leave and have their equity paid out.
The county began investigating its own insurance pool in late 2022, and a feasibility study showed potential savings for all municipalities for three major coverage areas, liability, property and automotive.
Durrell explained “considerable due diligence” was performed to determine there’s a good business case for moving to the insurance pool, especially as brokers typically take about 15 per cent of premiums. He estimated only about 34 cents of every dollar get paid out in claims.
“We’re really using the insurance playbook for ourselves,” he said.
Beyond the three areas identified, the town would still need to purchase its own coverage, such as for cyber insurance and environmental damage.
The pool is proposed to have three layers, the first of which is a deductible layer ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 for each municipality, depending on the frequency and severity of their claims.
Beyond that is the pooled layer for claims that exceed the deductible up to $500,000, which Durrell expects will provide better coverage than what would typically be available to some smaller towns.
Beyond that is commercial insurance for “extreme” events in order to prevent a single large claim from bankrupting the pool.
For example, Durrell explained that if one town in the pool faced a $15-million claim, they would pay their deductible of, say, $10,000, the pool would cover the next $490,000 and the commercial insurer would cover the remaining $14.5 million.
“We’re going to continue to transfer the very large risk and we’re going to only really retain the very predictable portion of the risk,” he said.
The insurance pool is set to launch on June 1, and be governed by an advisory board, to which each participating municipality is expected to appoint one member.
While many of those members are expected to be treasurers, the board is also set to be advised by an actuary, who will help them determine each municipality’s contribution based on different factors like each town’s exposure to risk and the number of claims they face.
After four years of collecting data, Durrell expects the board will “right-size” the premiums for each municipality.
Despite the presentation including a deadline of Feb. 14 for municipalities to subscribe to the insurance pool, Durrell explained the hard deadline is actually early March.
Recommendations from committee of the whole are considered for approval at the next regular council meeting.