MSE News: Insurance costs to soar as gender discrimination banned

pinkteapot

Percy1983 wrote: »

But ALL males pay more than ALL females in like for like positions.

I won't argue with postcodes as much as the area can have a direct effect on the possibility of theft etc, with that areas with higher crime rates are cheaper to buy houses in so the sums figure out overall.

ALL people in the 'dodgy' area pay more than ALL people in the 'good' area, even though not everyone in the dodgy area will claim and some people in the good area will claim.

How exactly is that different to all men paying more than all women?

Ihatecameron

Originally Posted by ashleypride
Utter rubbish. The market forces private compaines to be competitive, anyone taking too much profit is driven out of the market.

Like who for eg, name one insurance company that has been driven out of the market for over charging.

Still waiting to an answer to this one Ash.

pinkteapot

cogito wrote: »

And so you should.

Nah, this is fun. In a making-my-ears-bleed kind of way.

tacotaco

pinkteapot wrote: »

ALL people in the 'dodgy' area pay more than ALL people in the 'good' area, even though not everyone in the dodgy area will claim and some people in the good area will claim.

How exactly is that different to all men paying more than all women?

The difference is the first one is a legal discrimination based on location, and the second is an illegal discrimination based on gender.

Simulacraton

In all honesty, I am in two minds over this decision.

I myself am a male driver and only been the victim of accidents, by both men and women. I do not consider it fair I have paid vast sums of cash on the many performance cars I have owned, in comparison to my female counterparts.

However, I do think it the only option to 'judge' a risk based on statistics. The debate of what gender is generally the better (assuming 'better' = 'safer') driver is one that will forever go on, and I think this decision will stir a lot of debates about this again, but I do not think this ruling is the basis upon which to discuss it.

The EU says 'sex discrimination'. I don't think this is truly a sex discrimination issue, and by saying it is in defence of mens rights actually belittles the true issues that need to be addressed in an society that is becoming increasingly hostile to men in other areas.

I witness male drivers generally guilty of being more dangerous and taking far more risk, but also witness women drivers being generally more witless of what's going on around them.

It's a tough call.

ashleypride

Ihatecameron wrote: »

Originally Posted by ashleypride
Utter rubbish. The market forces private compaines to be competitive, anyone taking too much profit is driven out of the market.

Like who for eg, name one insurance company that has been driven out of the market for over charging.

Still waiting to an answer to this one Ash.

Why are you waiting? What will it prove either way?
I've told you the profit margins are lower, I've told you exactly why the insurance is higher, I am not about to teach you the basics of capitalism or argue about easily verifiable stats and facts. You believe whatever blinkered views you want.

Percy1983

pinkteapot wrote: »

ALL people in the 'dodgy' area pay more than ALL people in the 'good' area, even though not everyone in the dodgy area will claim and some people in the good area will claim.

How exactly is that different to all men paying more than all women?

Because gender is from birth and generally not a choice, the place you choose to live is optional, to which if you don't like it pay 2x more a house down the road and save £200 a year on car insurance.

ashleypride

Percy1983 wrote: »

With that I did find a odd thing, as it is my postcode does me no favours so I looked into getting a tracker fitted and figured as I plan to keep the car a while the cost might actually be saved on premiums over the years... my premium went up if I had a tracker fitted!

Yes, I've seen that aswell makes no sense. I find getting insurance very tedious.

Ihatecameron

ashleypride wrote: »

Why are you waiting? What will it prove either way?
I've told you the profit margins are lower, I've told you exactly why the insurance is higher, I am not about to teach you the basics of capitalism or argue about easily verifiable stats and facts. You believe whatever blinkered views you want.

You made a statement in post #100 "anyone taking too much profit is driven out of the market", and I asked you to back it up by naming even one company that has been driven out for over charging, but you can't. Therefore you have proved you do not know what you are talking about which is good enough for me either way. :A

wozearly

Ihatecameron, you clearly have strong views about insurers...all I can do is add my voice to the others saying that you're wrong.

There is no grand cartel of motor insurers conspiring each year to raise prices substantially to increase their profits. The increases in premiums reflect that the costs of providing motor insurance are rising substantially year on year.

I accept that this is frustrating / looks crazy to anyone with a perfect driving record who has never claimed in 25 years. But from an insurer's viewpoint, they don't know which of their policyholders are going to incur high claims in any given year.

Never having had an accident before doesn't mean you won't, as an extreme example, swerve to avoid a small child tomorrow and write off someone's brand new £200,000 Ferrari. The insurers look at how much they're paying out in claims, do what they can do determine what factors are affecting high and low claimants (e.g. miles driven, age, gender, claims record, car value, etc. etc.) and price accordingly so that across their entire business they take more in premiums than they pay in claims.

This is why being able to tick their "I'm a lower risk" boxes for things like being a low mileage driver, having your car in a garage or opting for a higher excess (ie. I'm so convinced that I'm not going to have an accident I'm willing to pay the first £500 of any claim) all reduce the premium. Rather than being excuses to hike the premium for no reason, they're designed to distinguish between higher and lower risk drivers (again, on average) and offer a more appropriate price to each.

I'm no expert on actuarial risk tables, but if you're still seeing high prices despite the positives you point to, that suggests that other drivers in a very similar position to you are still incurring substantial claims, and that they are not the perfect indicators of low risk that you might have hoped.

Given that its pretty darn easy to use aggregator sites to get quotes from several insurers and switch if you see a better deal, any insurer that gets their pricing or profit margins wildly out of kilter can expect to lose a lot of customers to cheaper competitors or those happier running with smaller profits. Those cheaper competitors will get burned if the reason their price is cheaper is that they've misjudged how much it costs to insure people.

The fact that you're seeing similar prices from several insurers and that none have gone bust from overcharging could be a sign of a cartel at work...or it might reflect that as a whole the industry does a pretty decent job of pricing and that yes, it really is that expensive to insure your car these days.

Percy1983 - there's a similar effect going on to describe the oddity you mention. Not all young women are better drivers than all young men, but because the majority are (at least in terms of claims incurred by the insurer), its possible to offer all young women a cheaper price on the basis that insuring any random young woman is, in the round, likely to result in lower claims than insuring any random young man.

Its galling to any brilliant young male drivers who never have an accident and never will (although no-one can know this), but as insurers aren't psychic they can't know that any individual person won't cause them high claims, so they have to price on an average basis using the various risk rating factors that they assess.

If an insurer is clever enough to spot a way to assess prices and risk more effectively than others, and becomes able to identify low-risk individuals and offer them a better price irrespective of them having one or more 'warning signs' that other insurers price more highly, then they're the ones to go with. Which is why its always a good idea to have a look around at renewal to see if there's a better deal available.