Non-binary customers win compensation for being asked if they are male or female

[IwantToRetire]

Financial services firms have been forced to pay hundreds of pounds in compensation to non-binary customers over “discriminatory” application forms.

MoneySuperMarket (MSM), the comparison website, and Transunion, a credit union, were hit with separate complaints because their application forms did not include options for non-binary customers in their gender section.

Both cases were escalated to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) which awarded the complainants compensation for “distress and disappointment” incurred from the forms.

MSM was ordered to pay £200 to unnamed non-binary customer Mx B who was asked if they were male or female.

The company’s website did acknowledge the omission in an explanatory note and asked non-binary customers to refer to their sex at birth when asking for quotes, the complaint read.

Full article (originally from the Telegraph) at https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/non-binary-customers-win-compensation-for-being-asked-if-they-are-male-or-female/ar-AA1rHO3M

You wouldn't really be subsidising them - Premier Inn will make a profit on the men's breakfasts. But there would be a huge profit margin on your egg on toast, so your indignation is certainly justified - it's still generally a better deal for men than for women.

Absolutely fing ridiculous.

They're not allowed to differentiate on the grounds of sex so I don't really know why they ask the question in the first place.

Two possibilities, I suppose.

One, marketing - who is currently buying their insurance and who do they need to target to win new customers?

Two, EDI brownie points - except that they don't seem to include all the EA2010 protected characteristics - certainly not age - and they've evidently run into trouble on the "gender" front. In which case, serve them damn well right.

Except that I would be subsidising them. If everyone ate the same massive quantity as the pile ‘em high blokes, the “all you can eat” price would be increased.

It’s the price it is, because not everyone does that.

The choice for me to pay less for a smaller quantity of food is removed from me. The people who benefit from me being forced pay to pay more are the pile ‘em high blokes. They are being subsidised by the small eaters.

It's an absolute joke.

Talk about easy money.

As a teenager, I was really tall and slim and was mistaken for a ''boy'' lots of times {from behind}

That was annoying- but bloody hell- what an easy payout for ''hurty feelings''.

Brexit wasn't about any benefits for you and I.

Insurers aren't allowed to rate on gender, but it's useful to collect it for reserving purposes.

So can't use it in models that are created to set premiums, but can use it to make slightly more accurate models for working out how much money needs to be put aside for future claims.

Non-binary customers - and customers self-identifying as the opposite sex - will make the models less than useful interesting.

Obviously one could in theory ignore/ discount the NBs, but how does one allow for those ticking the biologically incorrect sex?

That's not really how it works in practice as insurance is highly competitive with quite low profit margins.

When the gender directive came in, anyone raising all their prices to male levels would have been undercut by some other insurer who decided that they could still make a profit by rating a bit below the male prices, and would end up losing a lot of business.

I think what ended up happening was that the rates settled at somewhere a little above the average of the male and female prices.

There's really nothing you can do about it as there's no way to identify the incorrect data, but it will make the models that bit less accurate. All insurers are in the same position so I suppose in this case no one is actually disadvantaged since it's not used to set prices.

With regard to the insurance thing re not using sex to determine premiums, men used to get cheaper annuities than women (as likely to die younger), but not any more. Women used to get cheaper car and life insurance.

Thank you for the extra info @InsuranceAnalyst

Although it's about price comparison, MoneySupermarket covers health insurance. So it's important that they do collect sex, otherwise a health insurance isn't going to be built on accurate data. I wonder if an NB-identified person could still sue if the questions were something like:

1. Sex (as registered at birth): male, female
2. Gender identity: male, female, non-binary, other (please state), prefer not to say, not applicable

I agree with you about this. We have to see gender on forms and go with it or scratch it out. I hate all this shite!

I don't want either of them knowing thanks. I can't think why regulatory it should matter and they can bugger off with their marketing bollocks!

Yes good point, I've only ever worked in motor and household insurance, so I have no idea how health insurance works.

Those questions sound like a reasonable way to collect accurate data (as long as we actually get a not applicable / no gender identity option!)

If they are collecting data on gender identity, then complaints to the ICO can be made.

GDPR requires them to collect the minimum amount of personal data and everything collected must be required (not a nice to have).

I have yet to discover why gender identity information is ever needed. They could have a field that asks how someone likes to be addressed, if this is their concern.

It rhymes with Fucks.

How did they win when non binary is not a protected characteristic?

Now far is this nonsense going to go? Given that the explanatory note mentioned in the article clarifies that the financial platforms were asking for data about sex not gender, in effect what the complainants were saying is that they were offended by not being able to proclaim a gender identity in addition to providing the required information about sex.

Why should a form ask irrelevant questions just in order to give a person the opportunity to assert some aspect of themselves that happens to be of importance to them? I'm left-handed. It matters to me. Shouldn't I have the opportunity on all forms to proclaim this specialness?

Added to that, as soon as the status of 'non-binary' is properly distinguished from sex (in the manner implied by the explanatory note) it becomes all the more achingly apparent that I and almost every woman I know is 'non-binary', ie there are huge chunks of the gendered performance of femaleness that are simply alien to who we are and how we present.

@Thelnebriati
Presumably they won because the allegedly "independent" regulator ignored the law and followed the demands from Stonewall with their pretend laws in order to win Stonewall points?

Personally I'd have thought an independent regulator signing up to a political activist group should render it unsuitable to regulate. The CQC demonstrated this with their incoherent & contradictory assessments of GIDs. Ofsted had to scurry away from Stonewall when Stonewall were outed as writing to Ofsted moaning about inspectors not talking about trans issues enough to primary children.

It's time these organisations were required to be politically neutral.

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-4915750.pdf

The ruling.

No, it's GOT ridiculous!
I'm going to start sueing anyone who refers to my car as a "she" or my cat as a "he".
For all I know, my cat may prefer to be an "it" anyway.
I'll ask her - oops, I'll ask it.

I would be up for that!!
Where do I sign?

From the article:

The ombudsman noted that being non-binary is not recognised as a gender in law but it is a protected characteristic of the Equality Act 2010.

Well, it bloody isn't and I hope one of the many excellent legal feminists can put them right on this.

Had to fill out a form recently. I crossed out the pronoun section.