An insurance company now wishes to lecture us

[JustHereWithMyPopcorn]

Aviva shared these lovely tweets today. I am actually insured with them but I will not be renewing. And they are not bothered by customers leaving, clearly.

I'm half thinking of ringing Aviva tomorrow, quoting our policy numbers, and asking them if they still want our business? We pay a fairly hefty amount to them each month for life insurance/mortgage protection.

I'm almost 100% sure they would not want to lose our business - but if they did, plenty of other companies would step up.

Am surprised their actuaries are OK with this as a statement about their policies.

Doesn’t matter. Since December 2012 it has been illegal to discriminate by sex anyway. Life insurance - same for men and women. Car insurance - same for men and women. Annuity pricing - same for men and women.

Totally ruined the Sheila’s Wheels advert!

I wonder if they insure mixed sex rugby teams against liability for injury at the same rate as single sex ones?

Oh! Don't know what to say really.

Oh deeeeeeeeeeeeear.

Doesn’t matter. Since December 2012 it has been illegal to discriminate by sex anyway. Life insurance - same for men and women. Car insurance - same for men and women. Annuity pricing - same for men and women

Yes, it's illegal to charge different prices to customers, but you can bet they're still using it in their projections - it would be ridiculous not to.

All that ruling did is make women pay more and let men pay less, probably with a good margin for error added on.

I wonder how they deal with gender for pricing policies. Isn't life assurance cheaper for women?

That last tweet! Wow. It's times like these I am sad to be banned from Twitter!

I'm contemplating changing my username to

ItShouldntMatterTerry!

They are an insurance company they are supposed to insure us not preach

Is it work experience or bring your kid to work day? Anyone got the HOM's email address?

I think they've deleted the tweets? Unless i am looking in the wrong place?

Think it's still there
twitter.com/AvivaUK/status/1199974763910828032

[email protected]

I wonder how they deal with gender for pricing policies. Isn't life assurance cheaper for women?

I've been wondering this too. I suppose if enough males self ID as females, this will probably effect the cheaper policies for actual female people. Also If a lot of males start IDing as female for insurance purposes this would presumably skew the female data so it looks as if women's life expectancy is getting worse etc. Or perhaps insurance companies will start to challenge people's honesty where they have self ID'd as female. Insurance companies are notorious for not paying out on policies where misleading information has been given.

Encouraging to see the replies.

Actually it appears everything is unisex now anyway so they've nothing to lose :)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12608777

Have they deleted the original tweet? This is up now. twitter.com/AvivaUK/status/1199676141184995330

"Following the ruling (2012), the ABI estimated that men could see a 10% fall in costs, while women's rates could rise by as much as 20%"

As always with unisex policies only women lose

I am an actuary working in life insurance, and sex is one of the key variables we use to identify risk. As others have mentioned, the EU ruling (on the Test Achats case) back in 2012 means we can't use sex (or gender) to determine different premiums charged to customers. But for managing the finances and risks of the business, our models will apply different assumptions to male and female, because we have a large body of statistical evidence that mortality and sickness rates are different. We might commonly use the word "gender" rather than "sex", but we are referring to the (biological) sex shown on the birth certificate, because for example, rates of breast cancer or testicular cancer are demonstrably different between male and females. I'm not aware that gender reassignment has made much difference to our statistics - I assume at the moment, the number of biological males who are recorded on our systems as female (and vice versa) is too small to affect results.

Just to pick up on this comment:

Insurance companies are notorious for not paying out on policies where misleading information has been given.

I don't think "notorious" is a fair description: if someone has deliberately given incorrect information and a premium was set accordingly, why should the insurer happily pay out when they make a claim? that's not fair on the majority of customers who are truthful and have paid the appropriate premium.

Not that inclusive it seems.If you try to get a quote for insurance your title choices are are still Mr,Miss,Mrs,Ms or Doctor.

The bigger concern to me is that they've taken something quite significant to the homosexual community (the notion of "come out") and turned it into an advertising campaign with a hashtag!

That's awful and a sort of cultural appropriation. With the culture being gay and lesbian not geographic.

I don't think "notorious" is a fair description

Yes sorry that was a bit strong. I think sometimes it's easy for people to forget stuff not realising that it could affect your policy especially things that happen whilst your policy is already in place and has been running for some time. I understand it is important to be honest and not mislead insurance companies.