Insurance - sex discrimination

[TheBatPig]

I know the changes came in to force some years ago. I have been searching online and can't find a clear answer. Would anyone happen to know the exact reason that insurers are no longer able to take sex into account when calculating someone's premium? I think the change happened around 2012.

Three was an European Court of Justice ruling in March 2011.
But what seems to have happened is that women still get cheaper car insurance, because insurance companies changed the way they work out your premium.

europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-11-123_en.htm

www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2017/jan/14/eu-gender-ruling-car-insurance-inequality-worse

Motor insurance (and some other Financial Services products) had mostly been granted exception from this Act, but only to the extent of it being able to prove that it differentiated in price purely based upon statistical fact rather than in a discriminatory manner.
www.bewiser.co.uk/knowledge-base/insurance-thoughts/discrimination-and-motor-insurance

Insurance companies are still being challenged one exception at a time, as I understand it.

Thank you. So they are getting around it really by occupation and types of car driven. I just wondered what motivated the decision to remove sex as a factor when for example, age discrimination is still allowed.

My car insurance premium has gone down by over £50 this year. The only change is my recent marriage; returning my status to "single" or "living with partner" returns my premium to the original level.

I have no idea why they think I'm less risky now I have a ring on my finger!

There is a saying , lies, damn lies, and statistics.
You insurance rate is based on the third.

It was EU law.

The reason why you’re still allowed to discriminate based on age is that quite simply if life/annuity insurers had to charge the same price for a 21 year old as for a 99 year old then the entire industry would disappear overnight and thirty-somethings would no longer be able to buy protection for their dependants (alternatively you’d only be able to buy life cover after a very full and very expensive medical checkup) . You can ban sex-based pricing without destroying the industry as demonstrated by the fact that they did, and it didn’t.

I have no idea why they think I'm less risky now I have a ring on my finger!

Maybe they figure you will drive carefully now, with all the babies you have suddenly had due to marital status?

Or it could be a wanton harlot tax for those uppity women who refuse to have a male owner?

On a more serious note, at the time, I was fairly angry about the whole thing. Primarily because it was another example of 'equality' directives being used against women, ie female drivers subsidising the male ones.

Happy to see now that they are doing better risk assessment based on the stats.

It's good. Previously there was a broad brush difference by sex, because they had stats which showed women as a whole to be less of an insurance risk without any analysis of why. But this really wasn't very fair on men who drove responsibly- there really was no good reason for someone like my DH to have to pay more than me, for instance, we usually have very similar cars and behaviour on the road. It was too broad a categorisation. Now they have to be more specific so sensible men aren't being penalised along with the risk takers... and sensible women are the biggest winners.

On age, I suppose there's a good reason for larger premiums for youngsters - inexperience. There is now some mitigation in the form of the monitoring systems which help impose careful driving. Again, that's good - distinguish the cautious from the hotheads.

My DH had a discount for being married - I didn't !!!

They use statistics based on a combination of factors - otherwise we'd all be paying higher premiums to subsidize teens and high risk jobs etc

I’m not sure that they’re actually managing to segment drivers by their behaviour nowadays. Nothing you are asked tells the insurers that except your convictions or lack thereof (unless you have a black box).

I reckon that it’s been turned over to the machines who’ve analysed the data and said
“Midwives good, bra fitters good, scaffolders bad, kitchen fitters bad” and the insurers have said “well if that’s what the machine says then those occupations clearly tell us something important about behaviour which we’ll use to price risk. But we’re definitely not pricing on sex. ”

I reckon (though I haven’t seen a proper analysis) that the winners will be male primary teachers and the losers are female electricians, regardless of their driving habits (although people with points on their licence will also get thumped which is fair enough). The other winners are men who are prepared to buy their insurance from DriveLikeAGirl.com

I was annoyed at this too as it was pretty much the only thing where sex based generalisations worked in our favour.

I agree about the tough luck on responsible DHs paying more for fuckwit men, but I kinda thought, well, yeah. That's the real world isn't it.. about time men faced up to the consequnces of other men's behaviour.

And then of course it was found to be 'sexist' against men so it couldn't continue even it was justified, and women had to be found to be just as risky as men - like with crime.

All chipping away at the same thing perhaps.

But very much better if they now have the specific stats to support lower premiums for women. Of course now we have to ask, if self-ID has crept in there too. I hope not.