Car insurance premiums for many Ontario cities decreased in 2021, but not in Windsor-Essex.
That's according to RATESDOTCA’s Auto Insuramap, which maps out premiums by postal code.
The average Ontario premium in 2021 was $1,555, a 3.8 per cent decrease from 2020, when the average was $1,616.
Windsor is 21 on the list with a rate of $1,491, which is below the Ontario average, but a 5.5 per cent increase over Windsor's 2020 premium of $1,412.
Lakeshore, Tecumseh, LaSalle, Amherstburg, Kingsville, Essex, Comber, Chatham, Pelee Island and Leamington are tied for 28th on the list at $1,383, a 14 per cent increase over the 2020 premium of $1,213.
Tanisha Kishan, insurance expert with RatesDotCa, suggests growth played a factor in the insurance premium increases in Windsor-Essex.
"One of the driving factors for why you see different premiums in location versus location, for growing areas and communities, we tend to see the traffic dynamic change from year-over-year," she says. "If that is the case, then that something we see in the stats and insurance premiums usually corelate to that move as well."
Kishan notes they did see a decrease in quite a few areas compared to 2020 due in part to pandemic.
She says as more people worked from home, that impacted the number of cars on the road and the volume of insurance claims, which in turn drove down premiums.
But Kishan says it's tough to stay where rates will go in 2022 given the uncertainty during the pandemic.
"If we start to see driving change to what they were pre-pandemic, it is likely we'll start to see rates reflect that as well."
Vaughan now claims the title as the city with the highest annual insurance premiums, at $2,178.
Among the most inexpensive places to insure a car were in Cobourg, Port Hope, Picton and Kingston where each had an average annual premium of about $1,100.
You can click here to find Ratedotca's Auto Insuramap to see the average rate for the postal code where you live.