Last week’s hailstorm could cost MPI $20 million

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This article was published 19/06/2018 (2952 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hail damage from a powerful storm that lashed much of southern Manitoba last Thursday could cost Manitoba Public Insurance “upwards of $20 million,” spokesman Brian Smiley says.

As of Tuesday, the auto insurer had received more than 2,000 damage claims. It expects that total to exceed 4,000.

“We have opened emergency claim centres in Winkler and Ninette,” Smiley said. “We’ll be moving those vehicles through as quickly as we can.”

Ninette, Winkler and Manitou were among the hardest-hit communities, with residents reporting hail stones as large as baseballs.

A relative respite from major hail claims helped MPI record a healthy profit last fiscal year. The Crown corporation paid out $8.3 million in hail-damage claims in 2017-18, compared with $45.1 million the previous year.

Smiley said the size of the hailstones, the make and model of vehicles damaged and whether a storm hits a densely populated area are the main determinants of how expensive a storm will be for MPI.

“If the stones are big, baseball-like big, they’re knocking out windshields, they’re smashing out windows,” he said. The cost of repairing newer vehicles, made out of “complex materials and technology,” is high, he added.

If similar-sized hail had pounded Winnipeg, he said, the damage would have been “potentially catastrophic.”

One of biggest hailstorms in the Winnipeg area occurred in July 1996, when there were 24,000 claims for damaged vehicles, resulting in a $53-million payout by MPI. In 2007 in the Dauphin area, a ferocious hailstorm caused 14,000 claims worth $53 million.

Last week, MPI reported a profit of $91 million for the 2017-18 fiscal year. It also filed an application with the Public Utilities Board of Manitoba for an overall premium increase of 2.2 per cent for next year.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca