Insurance companies take a bite out of coverage. Homeowner’s policy not renewed because of pets.
March 31, 2004 - An Alberta man has found himself without home insurance after his company failed to renew his policy because he keeps dogs his insurance company considers dangerous.
Emmanuel Gionet, a Calgary resident, received a letter from Allstate Insurance advising him his policy would not be renewed after he disclosed to the insurance company that he owns a Rottweiler-Burmese mountain dog-Labrador crossbreed and a German shepherd-Labrador crossbreed.
"The policy no longer meets our underwriting guidelines due to unacceptable dog breeds in the household," the letter said.
Certain types of dogs will trigger cancellation or non-renewal of the policy, including pit bulls, Rottweilers, German shepherds and Doberman pinschers, and any crossbreed with a significant portion of those dogs in its ancestry.
Allstate spokeswoman Karyn Toon said the policy change was not a spur-of-the-moment decision.
"We won't transfer the risk of those dogs that can be trained as guard dogs. We never wrote them as guard dogs (for businesses), so we're not going to write them in personal property situations," Toon said.
Allstate conducted a risk review in mid-2003 on dog liability and found the four breeds were high risk, she said. They instituted the policy prohibiting those dogs a short time later. Toon said pet liability is nothing new.
"We have certainly for many years asked what pets people own. Pets can incur loss," she said. "The liability can be as high as $1 million for one dog bite."
In 2002, the property/casualty insurance industry in the U.S. paid out US$345.5 million in dog-bite liability claims, up from $250 million seven years earlier (these numbers only account for liability claims from homeowners' or renters' policies).
Although the Canada Safety Council says Canada has no national data on the canine population, dog-related deaths and injuries or which breeds cause the most harm, it estimates that dogs bite 460,000 Canadians annually.
"My fear is that these dogs and any dog with these breeds will be banned by insurance companies and then won't be adopted from shelters. It's a total knee-jerk reaction," Gionet said.
© Copyright 2004 The Canadian Real Estate Association