Court rules that gender cannot be taken account wrt car insurance

[JessinAvalon]

Breaking news on the BBC.

It will affect car insurance costs, life insurance and annuities.

Jeanine, I'm not convinced about that argument re age discrimination. Try applying it to discrimination with regards to work and you'll see it doesn't work in that scenario.

"Yes, I know that the only reason why I'm making you redundant is because you are 55yo and I accept that you can still do the job perfectly well, but in my favour I gave you a job in your 20s, 30s and 40s. At every time in life people will be subject to employment terms more or less favourable to them, and it just so happens that in your 50s, the employment market doesn't favour you."

There'd be uproar.

I've just had a thought.
If insurance companies can't discriminate by sex they will want to attract women customers by other means, such as women-friendly advertising.
Do you think there will be a rash of car insurance companies with girly names and branding specially designed to put off men?

I don't think it's a comparison with employment. There is still no justification in hiring or firing someone because of there age. You don't become a better or worse employee as you get older, although it might indicate that you or becoming a better or worse I insurance risk.

This does if course assume all other factors being equal. However, I'm sure that man employers will view age as a proxy for experience (positive) and salary expectation (negative). This doesn't make it right or lawful though.

Janine you and Advocate General are missing the point. Age changes your insurance premium because statistically people are more or less likely to have an accident at any given age. These are the same statistics that show that women are more or less likely to have an accident than men. If you are saying that those stats don't matter for gender then you have to say they don't matter for age either.

I also agree with Karmakameleon's point.

A valid comparison

The push for this is coming from the EU, and Britain is behind most of Europe when it comes to use of gender in insurance. Different rates are considered unfair in other countries, and they're surviving, so I'm sure the UK can deal with it too.

I think the principle is that in a fair society, we don't make judgments about what people are likely to do before they actually do it, even if you can make predictions that might be valid on the average, but which are prejudice when they're applied to individuals.

It's an interesting idea that companies might try to use sneaky but legal ways to discourage customers that they don't want!

Currently sensible, careful men under the age of 25 are heavily penalised by their foolhardy boyracer mates - all insurance is based on a generalised level of risk. The only way to stop that at all would be to do some sort of individual psychlogical and physical test and issue individually prepared quotes.

Maybe the insurance industry could look at it another way - and 'back load' the cost to drivers of whatever age and sex who cause an accident through idiotic driving, rather than frontloading the policy based on a certain level of categorisation.

More young women than young men will presumably get thier premiums down quickly because of the No Claims Bonus.

And maybe the lower premiums for young men will enable more boy racers to get on the road at all. To everyone's loss.

Niecie: I think Janine and the AG's point are that age does not in itself discriminate against any one individual over the course of their life, i.e. if you get preferential treatment at 30 years old, everyone has the potential opportunity to benefit from this. If you only preferential treatement by virtue of being male, then clearly only half the population has the opportunity to benefit from this.

TeiTetua: unfortunately the whole insurance industry is built around making predictions around individuals. Not sure I see a way around that one, or rather, not sure I see a way around that one without insurance premiums only being made available to everyone at the cost of the highest individual premium.

Sakura: not really sure that insurance companies are sexist in that regard or rather, I think they are as much or as little sexist, racist etc. etc as they could legally be provided it improved their operating margins. I actually don't think they'll like ruling as it stops them being able to fine tune their business model and means they'll have to put extra capital up against the same (theoretical) level of liabilities.

I think it's wildly unfair that this will make driving unaffordable to many young women - and that it is more likely to be young women who drive because their sense of personal safety is an issue (if they have to come home late from work etc, and feel unsafe), and that it is mostly due to MEN that they feel their personal safety is compromised.

As I said, Britain is behind other countries when it comes to gender-neutral insurance. If anyone wants to predict what'll happen, look at other places in Europe. Is it a problem there, or is Britain so different that it would be a problem in the UK even if it's not elsewhere?

For instance, if "this will make driving unaffordable to many young women", you'd expect French and German woman to be complaining already. I've never heard of this, but maybe it's happening.

Not sure how to feel about this.

Firstly, there are loads of other sexist things going on, where the women are getting the raw deal. Like the pay gap. Why isn't Brussels addressing these? I would guess because men are the injured party in this case.

Secondly, why should young women suck up the cost of young men being so reckless behind the wheel?

But, thirdly, surely any move for gender equality is a good one?

I'm conflicted.

Utter silliness.

A lot of people have two cars in the family or both man and woman use the car so it all evens out anyway.

The only group who suffers currently is the younger single men - who already get paid more and are free of childcare/house work/ sex discrimination in the work place etc... surely they can take the hit??!!

I feel conflicted but also concerned about this as it affects annuities. I think it will do women harm; actuarial figures will be levelled down to a lower average age of death than the average age of death for women, so most men's pensions will increase, relatively speaking, while women's will fall. Which is not a good thing when already so many elderly women are terribly poor.

Do you think there will be a rash of car insurance companies with girly names and branding specially designed to put off men?

Like this, you mean?

Diamond is a girl's best friend

Mamazon I was thinking more for things like company insurance when people who reside in some parts of the world will be declined. Which could be seen as discriminatory. If the result is that none of a company's African employees can get cover while the European ones can then there could be an indirect racial discrimination claim possibly.

We'll have to wait and see what happens next.

BTW I don't buy that there is a difference between statistical risks associated with different protected characteristics - ie sex age health (disability) and so on.

Oops loads of xposts had this [age open from this morning and thought I'd refreshed - obviously not!

Will catch up.

Sakura's point is interesting about equality legislation being accessed and used by the group who already hold the privilege. No surprise there.

LOL David!

It's a tricky one - part of me says "Well, the statistics are there so it's fair to charge differently" but then I wouldn't want anyone to use statistics to decide that, eg, women are generally less good at computer programming, so choose not to employ me. And I don't want DSs car insurance to be based on the fact that, statistically, he's expected to be an idiot, when actually he's quite a sensible, cautious person.

I hope that they put young people (of either gender) onto policies which can change rapidly to go up when they have accidents, and down if they don't, so that they can quickly get an individually adjusted premium. That way, it should even out more quickly.

sakura Tue 01-Mar-11 13:39:07
What a surprise. Men use "equality" to get what they want.

They wanted lower annuity rates?

Everyone will end up worse off. The costs to the insurance companies of making these changes will just be passed onto the policyholders. Utter madness!!

Not everyone will live long enough to benefit from annuities, lower car insurance rates etc. Tis ageist I tell you.

Jeanine the people who brought this case brought it specifically about car insurance premiums.

The ABI reported that when the people who brought the claim were asked for their views on age related pricing they were nonplussed.

I don't think we can assume that the people who brought the case looked beyond their particular beef ie car insurance premiums. Maybe they did. But maybe they didn't. If they haven't given a thought to age related premiums then it might be true that they hadn't given a thought to annuity rates either.

please can someone tell me what an annuity is?