To think if Sheila's wheels' old policy

[Faultymain5]

of giving good deals to women is discriminatory and against the law that there is no reason for a car insurance application to ask if you are male or female.

Just a fleeting thought as I discover whether my existing renewal quote is better than a new quote altogether.

@BarbaraofSeville We've both just bought our car insurance and the cheapest in both cases within a few pence was either Sheila's Wheels or esure and I think both of us have picked esure probably because Sheila's Wheels used to advertise using the 'if we need to attract women it needs to be flippant/silly' model, which is offputting.

They're the same company though.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

That's actually interesting. But kind of gives a value to all that jokes about women and parking...

could perhaps be because women still tend to be the ones with the kids in the car and are distracted when parking. But both DH and I have hit bollards.

Here's the ECJ decision by the way: curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=en&num=C-236/09

@tommika

Age isn’t a protected characteristic in discrimination legislation

Insurers can also produce the evidence that they use in the criteria from the questions asked.
There are generic statistics and personal elements.
Gender fell within the generic statistics on the cost of claims by females vs males, but is a protected characteristic.
Your past driving history gives the personal statistics (how long you have had a licence, claims to date, any motoring offences etc)

Age is a protected characteristic.

Or possibly that some women generally tend to have to park more often so statistically more chances to have a parking accident.

School run
Home
Supermarket
Dentist or doctor (possibly picking up a child so more parking)
Picking up dry cleaning or another errand.
School run
Home
Football or other evening child activity
Home
Add in a job for some too.

Man
Work
Home
Maybe a stop or two on top if he picks up milk etc or has another errand.

Obviously I am wildly guessing.

@Ginkypig

Or possibly that some women generally tend to have to park more often so statistically more chances to have a parking accident.

School run
Home
Supermarket
Dentist or doctor (possibly picking up a child so more parking)
Picking up dry cleaning or another errand.
School run
Home
Football or other evening child activity
Home
Add in a job for some too.

Man
Work
Home
Maybe a stop or two on top if he picks up milk etc or has another errand.

Obviously I am wildly guessing.

All of these are true, but what really drives costs are personal injuries. If someone is paralysed in an accident this can get into high six figures if not seven. So maybe more bumps for us historically, but more high value accidents for the blokes which historically raised their premiums.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

And stats suck btw. If my DH or I (especially him apparently) had British names, our policy would be cheaper.

That's not true. Highly illegal and absolutely not worth insurance companies taking the risk, even if they wanted to.

@Faultymain5

So all in all statistically it was correct. I'd loveto know who Sheila's Wheels' lawyers were. I might at least look up the ruling, as I can't see how they lost, but insurers can still discriminate against young people.

Sheila's Wheels lawyers were a combination of Slaughter and May and Weil, Gotshall and Manges. S&M are a Magic Circle firm (one of the top five firms in the UK on revenue) and Weil are an US-HQ'd firm who set up in London. Both are incredible firms with stellar reputations and unbelievably well qualified lawyers working for them.

That's not true. Highly illegal and absolutely not worth insurance companies taking the risk, even if they wanted to.

It very much was happening. As I said, I don't know if it still does. I hope not.

@Brainwave89

I agree with that.

To be honest my post was more about the perception and jokes of women being made out to be bad drivers like the joke SchrodingersImmigrant mentioned. Rather than how these things realistically affect insurance premiums.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

That's not true. Highly illegal and absolutely not worth insurance companies taking the risk, even if they wanted to.

It very much was happening. As I said, I don't know if it still does. I hope not.

Did you try putting an "English" name into the form? I have a "foreign" maiden name and my licence was that way for a few years after marriage - never made the slightest bit of difference when I changed it to DH's very English surname.

As I said above. We did.

My bad
Age is protected

It could also be that either age discrimination has been brought up and defended by insurers criteria stats etc, or it has never proceeded far enough to test

I've worked in this area.

In answer to the original question, the company I worked for stopped rating on gender when it became illegal, but still collected the data for other legitimate purposes such as performance monitoring and reserving (basically they set money aside based on the amount of claims they think they'll have, and this can be predicted more accurately by including additional factors such as gender, which cannot be included in the actual price).

I've no doubt this has been fully checked out by our legal team and the data is allowed to be collected for this purpose.

@tommika

My bad Age is protected

It could also be that either age discrimination has been brought up and defended by insurers criteria stats etc, or it has never proceeded far enough to test

Parliament began the process of making it illegal for insurers to change excessive amounts more for young drivers. The idea was that if the evidence suggests a 17 year old driver will cost an insurer 20% more than a 50 year old then the insurance could change 20% more. Unfortunately, 17 year olds can't vote and MPs realised that it wouldn't work out well for them to put through a law which supported young people - so they pulled the bill. If anyone that age had the money to take it to court, I'm certain that they'd win - but anyone that age who can afford to take it to court wouldn't bother because they'd have more than enough money to pay the insane rates of insurance.

Different premiums for different names could be due to something other than companies looking for foreign names - I would think rating someone differently due to having a foreign name would not be legal these days.

I obviously can't say too much without risking giving away commercially sensitive information, but I can think of a few ways that an additional quote under a different name could give you a different price, without directly rating on the name (e.g. fraud checks to see if that person exists).

@MootingMirror a 17 year old really does cost a lot more than a 50 year old though. I think a law to ensure that the increased premium is proportional to the risk would be reasonable, but I wouldn't expect premiums for young drivers to come down massively if that was brought in.

Just on the names point, insurers will use your name to review your credit history. This is used to validate the fact you are who you say you are (right address, voting register etc) and to work out your premium. There is a correlation between credit scores and propensity to claim. If the system cannot find you it either will not quote at all, or it will charge a much higher rate.

On 17 year olds costing only 20% more for insurers to cover than 50 year olds. The data from my company would suggest this is wildly out. If we were to look at 17 year olds in isolation, they are massively unprofitable as a group, i.e. we lose money.

Yes, they will check the names, but not properly when you are doing it through comparison websites, or do they?

As in not properly until you go further than simple search on comparison website. Obviously, they check it properly before issuing insurance.

@InsuranceAnalyst

Different premiums for different names could be due to something other than companies looking for foreign names - I would think rating someone differently due to having a foreign name would not be legal these days.

I obviously can't say too much without risking giving away commercially sensitive information, but I can think of a few ways that an additional quote under a different name could give you a different price, without directly rating on the name (e.g. fraud checks to see if that person exists).

Would a comparison site really have the software necessary to identify "foreign" names? Is that realistic?

@satnighttakeaway I don't know a great deal about the implementation as my job was risk modelling, but I'm pretty sure there's a live link between the comparison vwebsite and the insurer. So the data input by the customer gets fired to the insurer, who then calculate the premium and send back a price to the website.

So in theory, foreign names could be used for pricing via a comparison website if the insurer has a way of identifying them, which could easily be done just by going through a list of customer names and flagging them or something.

Like I said though, I'd be surprised if it was legal, I know my company would definitely not do this.

@satnighttakeaway so not necessarily the foreignness factor, but premium could definitely be affected via credit checks run on the different names when using a price comparison website.

[quote InsuranceAnalyst]@satnighttakeaway so not necessarily the foreignness factor, but premium could definitely be affected via credit checks run on the different names when using a price comparison website.[/quote]
Using a comparison website doesn't involve a credit check nor I assume is there any specific involvement of the insurer unless you actually take the policy out. Surely they are algorithm driven based on each individual insurer's requirements on that day and that's why they say the price may change based on your actual circumstances.

Using a price comparison website definitely does involve a credit search as some insurers need this information in order to return a premium. It will be a "soft" search that will not impact your credit rating.

I don't think the rating algorithms are held by the price comparison website. Pretty sure the information entered is automatically passed to the insurer's system, which then returns a premium based on the entered information, and any other information the insurer can join on based on this, such as the results of a credit check.

In addition, if you pay monthly we need to do a credit search as this is effectively a loan for the annual premium, which you pay off in monthly installments. This is why it is cheaper to pay annually, as interest is added to the monthly payments.