Getting Car and Renters Insurance

When we were planning for our move from NYC to Toronto, we bought a used car.  We were going to need car insurance again!  I had used Allstate for car and renters insurance when I lived in MN and had retained them for renters insurance in NY.  So, when we bought the car in MN, we had it insured temporarily until our move through Allstate.  When we arrived to Toronto, we tried to just call-up Allstate Canada to have our car and renters policies transferred, but low and behold it isn't that easy.  In Canada, they have separate underwriters than in the US so there is no such thing as just "transferring" your policy per se.  For the renters policy, we were going to have to have our rings re-appraised even though we've had them continuously insured through Allstate since we got engaged.  The experience didn't make us feel like we were being rewarded for customer loyalty so we decided to check out prices with other companies - if we had to start over, it may as well be at the best price.

Car insurance is just plain expensive in Ontario (am I starting to sound like a broken record?), in part because they require high liability coverage.  While the law requires $200k in coverage, from our experience no one will actually insure you with less than $1 million in coverage - compare this to NY which requires $75k and MN at $90k.  You can see that you will be paying a lot more money.

Among the companies we looked at, State Farm came in about 20% lower so we made the switch.  Our policy costs about $150 per month for liability only.  At the end of the day for our renters policy, we have to have our wedding bands appraised in order to get them covered but not my engagement ring which was better than Allstate.  My understanding also is that State Farm Canada and the US are more closely linked than in Allstate's case so if we end up back in the States, we hope the transition is smooth.  Some friends of ours had State Farm in the US and said their transition to Canada was easy.

One thing I thought was interesting is that we can't pay our bill online.  We can set-up automatic debit through the office from our bank account, but no way to manage this stuff online.  Maybe this is just a difference between State Farm and Allstate?  Or the fact that many things aren't as available online here as in the US?