The cost for the City of Kamloops to insure its assets is going up by nearly 20 per cent this year, by $120,000, to $725,000.

Finance Director Kathy Humphrey says the main reason is the replacement value of city-owned assets going up.

The other is because of rising insurance rates, with multi-national companies trying to recover costs from global disasters, like fires in Australia and California.

“We have heard from several other municipalities where they’ve had a seven, eight or nine per cent increase of their rate,” Humphrey told Kamloops city council last fall. “I don’t know that we can hold it off for long, because that’s really an international problem with insurance companies, with all of the environmental disasters that are happening all over the world.”

The cost for the city to ensure its assets a year ago was $605,000.

“I give kudos to our operations teams, and our risk management team has done a really good job with managing the risk associated with operating the city,” Humphrey says.

“And so we haven’t had very many significant claims over the years. And so as a result, actually was very flat compared to a lot of municipalities.”