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.

Nagoo - an annuity is a kind of pension - your pension money gets used to buy you an annual income. The amount you get depends on how much money goes in, and how long they expect you to carry on living and therefore claiming the annual pension, which is why it is often different for women as they tend to live longer on average.

An annuity is a financial product - you pay put a (large) lump sum in return for set annual payments. It's a way of turning your "pension pot" into a retirement income stream.

When you come to "buy" your annuity, the amount of annual income that companies will offer you depends n how long they think you'll live. So Men tend to get higher incomes for the same sized pot, because their life expectancy is shorter and the company therefore expects to be paying out for a shorter time.

With this ruling, they will no longer be able to offer a sex-differentiated rate. There is no way the companies could afford to increase the lower but longer-paying female annuities; so we can expect male annuities to decrease (no one seems to be bandying figures around yet).

So if you think in your retirement part of your income stream might come from a male private pension, you will need to watch this very carefully.

It's a real kicker, as the ruling envisages implementation by end next year - a problematic time-line on something as long-term as pensions planning.

Not just private pensions surely - money purchase company pension schemes will be affected as well. ie pretty much everyone.

Yes - any purchase of an annuity stands to be affected - by "private" I meant to indicate "not public sector / final salary". This definitely includes a high and increasing number of company pensions.

thank you

'This ruling opens up a huge can of worms, it will be interesting to see where it leads.
I imagine that age and disability discrimination will up soon - the argument against using sex applies to age and health questions as well I think.
Is going to be very interesting to see what happens with all of this.'

This madness is the inevitable result of progressive policies. It has only just begun, and as it progresses, so society itself will unravel, which has always been the goal of the revolutionaries.

Pandora's box has been opened and the boy racer will be treated no differently to everyone else. This is what happens when the pretence that everybody is exactly the same, that there are no differences between people, holds sway. A criminal in prison has already argued that it is against his human rights not to be allowed to eat chocolate in prison. Liberals and progressives will tie themselves in knots as they end up supporting the criminal's right to be treated equally.

So now it is discriminatory to charge men more for insurance, even though they have proportionally more accidents than women. Soon it will be discriminatory to lock certain criminals up, since it will be argued that they didn't stand a chance, they didn't come from an equal background, society discriminated against them. Soon they will be free to roam the streets because they must be equal.

Women have less accidents, but should be treated equally to men, who on the whole, have more.
Law abiding citizens commit less crime, but should be treated equally to criminals, who commit more.

i quite like progressive policies, claig. Most of what you say is mindless, ignorant ramblings.

Then you will probably like this policy too. Most of what I sy may well be mindless, ignorant ramblings, but I fear that all of what you say is.

I think we'll think it strange that we discriminated this way. Why should we take on the "average" characteristics of whatever 50% of the population we belong to? Some women are sensible drivers, others aren't.

As far as I see it, there are lots of other examples of unequal pricing and I think women would gain more than they would lose. For example, men are charged 15% less than women at Tony & Guy for a cut and blow dry.

i neither like it,nor dislike it.insurance co.s don't really care who they rip off most.
your ramblings go onto wider themes,which are frankly stupid. but youhold your opinion.

and sakura's point is deeply immature. this is not a male conspiracy. but don't let that stop her feeling a victim of it. she seems most comfortable there.

Insurance is about probabilities, about what will happen on average. People have to be treated as population samples, as groups and inferences made, because it is impractical to assess each person's risk individually, without respect to a group of which they form a part. We make classifications based on groups, "no man is an island", we are connected to the groups of which we are a part.

The wider themes are like the wider society of which we are a part. The wider themes are part of the whole, part of the philosophical base from which this one particular policy has just grown out of, just like a tree grows from the soil, so this policy has a philosophical base. This is only the start of the policies that will emanate from this particular philosophical base, and the end result of the policies to come will not be beneficial in my opinion. They will eventually lead to the topsy turvy world of Alice in Wonderland, and the law will end up in the hands of the Mad Hatter.

as I say, ramblings of poor quality.

Yes, I agree, they are above your head.

ok.

claig - I think what will actually happen is that insurance companies will very quickly start to work on the information they hold about the individual, rather than the group. The "boy racer" will be treated differently, just as soon as he has an accident or is caught speeding.

As I said before, I don't want to be treated as part of a group in other areas of life - statistically, women can be shown to be less good at maths and computer programming than men. But as an individual, I'm as good as they are - equality legislation says that employers are not allowed to make assumptions about my skills just because I happen to be in the female half of humanity. And that's something women have fought tooth and nail for over the years.

Equally, no-one is going to start saying we don't have to keep certain people locked up, because of the threat they pose to an ordered society. I'm pretty sure we could draw a graph showing the increase in the "equality legislation" you decry, alongside the increase in custodial sentences - increased equality hasn't reduced the numbers of people in prison in the slightest.

Individual women who have less accidents are not to be treated the same as individual men who have more. But no individual should be judges on the basis of their gender alone. Whereas criminals are judged on the fact that they have committed a crime, because they have actually done something, not happened to be born one gender.

Yes you are right. but I think this is about a priori knowledge. If someone has had an accident or committed a crime, then they will be treated differently as individuals to those that haven't. But increasingly, a priori, judgements about perceived risks will be more difficult to make, even when statistics as a whole show that this may lead to decisions that defy reality. I am in favour of equality and equal opportunities, but I feel that this particular law defies reality and is an inevitable outcome of applying equality legislation blindly without taking reality into account.

I think it is an example of the law of unintended consequences, and many similar ones will follow. I think the prisoner demanding the right to eat chocolate on the basis of human rights is just the tip of the iceberg.

It seems to me that the law is blind and applies judgements that follow precedent. It cannot take into account the philosophical ramifications of precednt.

amum the difficulty with your idea (although it is correct) is that it doesn't assist with the most expensive drivers - new drivers.

People keep talking about claims experience - but TBH if a person who has only been driving for a year or 2 has any claims experience as a result of their own driving they are unlikely to be insurable. Ditto any speeding convictions.

The tricky thing for the companies is how are they going to price the new drivers. They have no history to go on. This is the reason they are the most expensive to insure. I don't know what the answer is. A basic cross-subsidy may be the only answer.

As an aside I read today in the metro that 95% of serious accidents and deaths on the road are caused by young male drivers, which I was quite shocked by.

Also I don;t think sakura's point is deeply immature, I think it is very interesting. Did women ever bring an action based on this legislation about their annuity rates? Not as far as I know. I guess most women thought "yes OK women live longer so that's fair enough" and put up and shut up. Meanwhile a group of men see that their premiums are higher again for a statistically valid reason and the response is outrage and court. I think it demonstrates very well what people mean when they talk about male entitlement.

Insurance companies do not set out to rip people off as I've heard a few people say on here.

The profit margins on car insurance are very very slim because of all these comparison websites, companies have to compete on price.

Car insurance is expensive, but that is just how much it costs, companies aren't making wild profits on it. The price has gone up a lot in recent years partly because car insurance fraud has seen a massive increase in recent years, and unfortunately that cost is passed onto all policyholders.

Agree with trixy there as well, as someone who worked in the industry for years. There needs to be a profit margin but it is a highly competitive industry and so profits are actually slim.

Another reason for car insurance going up is all of the money being dished out to legal types who are up to all sorts of shenanigans with claims for injury etc.