Alberta has scrapped cabinet's standing power to freeze auto insurance premiums and handed the Rate Board sharper tools to monitor insurer profitability.
Bill 27, the Financial Statutes Amendment Act, 2026, passed third reading on the evening of May 6, 2026, on division, and received Royal Assent on May 14, 2026. Sponsored by Finance Minister Nate Horner, the omnibus bill amends five Alberta statutes, but the centre of gravity for the property and casualty market sits in the Insurance Act and the Automobile Insurance Act.
A key change for carriers is the outright repeal of section 610 of the Insurance Act. That section gave the Lieutenant Governor in Council the power to freeze premiums by order, retroactively if cabinet chose, and to suspend or modify decisions of the Automobile Insurance Rate Board. With Bill 27, the standing freeze power is gone from the statute book.
In its place, the Rate Board gets new room to operate. A new section 604.1 lets the Board issue guidelines on any matter related to its powers and duties under the Act and regulations, or a power or duty assigned to it by the Minister, with publication required on the Board's website. The Regulations Act does not apply to those guidelines, which gives the Board a faster, lighter tool than formal regulation.
The bill also expands what regulations can do. Section 608 picks up two new heads of authority, one for administrative-expense and profitability targets for insurers, and another for the treatment of premiums collected in excess of profitability targets. Section 801.1, which deals with what the Minister can charge reciprocal insurance exchanges, fraternal societies and insurers to recover, now expressly includes capital costs. Together, the three changes give Alberta a regulatory architecture that is less about freezing prices and more about watching insurer financial performance.
For brokers and adjusters wondering when the new no-fault regime actually starts, Bill 27 also moves the goalposts on timing. The Automobile Insurance Act, as passed in 2025, was set to apply to accidents on or after January 1, 2027. Bill 27 strikes that fixed date and substitutes "the date this section comes into force." The transitional provision in the Automobile Insurance Act, section 103, gets the same treatment. The hard date is no longer baked into the statute; commencement now turns on proclamation.
Much of the operational rework inside Bill 27 was covered when the bill cleared second reading. Medical assessments move under the Superintendent, who selects the assessor on application from the insurer, and insurers lose their parallel power to require examinations outside that process. The bill also rewrites the "Benefits payable regardless of fault" priority ladder, sets out an "excess compensation" optional policy that any insurer offering it must pair with a standard-coverage policy, and refreshes the definitions of "accident," "insured," "non-earner," "permanent impairment," and "care recipient." All of that remains in the final text.
The full text of Bill 27 is available at https://docs.assembly.ab.ca/LADDAR_files/docs/bills/bill/legislature_31/session_2/20251023_bill-027.pdf.
