MSE News: Insurance costs to soar as gender discrimination banned

lisyloo

What do people think that insurers should base premiums on, if not factors which have been proven to be statistically relevant?

The one that often comes up is driving experience and claims experience.
Trouble is you still need to judge new drivers in some way.
It also would penalise those who have been unlucky e.g. had a 50/50 fault accident against them just because they were on a country road and there were no witnesses.
Loads of accidents are unfairly decided because either it's cheaper or there is no evidence.

We can't afford to judge every driver individually, neitehr can we afford to assess every claim fairly either sow e settle for least cost. That makes it an unfair basis for judging premiums.

StevieJ

pinkteapot wrote: »

No, they're not. But insurers don't have crystal balls - they don't know which young driver will crash and which won't.

What do people think that insurers should base premiums on, if not factors which have been proven to be statistically relevant?

They were making the point about precedent, not whether it is the correct thing to do.

StevieJ

ElkyElky wrote: »

Since it has been ruled as gender discrimination, won't that open up a can of worms for age discrimination now?

Good point and I don't see how they can avoid it.

SnowMan

I think there are many people who believe passionately in legislating against discrimination who realise that this particular decision is completely ludricous and just silly.

Insurers will presumably still be able to rate according to occupation. Then presumably for example nurses will still get lower car insurance premiums because most nurses are female? But will that then be classed as indirect discrimination against males? It is going to make it all a legal minefield.

Perhaps buying a pink car might be an idea. Again the insurers might assume that you would be more likely to do that if you are female and so will be a better risk and therefore offer lower premiums to people with pink cars. Would that be indirect discrimination?

pinkteapot

On a lighter note:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/women's-car-insurance-to-cost-same-as-a-drunk%2c-blindfolded-monkey's-201103013586/

ElkyElky

I think the whole system is unfair and if they've ruled male and female pricing as gender discrimination then they are basically making a statement that if any attribute of a person is used to calculate the premium, then it could be considered discrimination.

I'd love to see the day someone tries their luck with an age or job discrimination case.

pinkteapot

As I said earlier, all the young men happy with this ruling will be singing a different tune when they hit retirement and realise how it's affected their pension.

Underwriter

StevieJ wrote: »

Good point and I don't see how they can avoid it.

Well you'd better hope and pray that we do because if not, that is the end of the life insurance industry, and I'm not exaggerating.

smk77

KevinG wrote: »

Madness is the word - the sheer illogicality of this and its inevitable extensions seem to have passed them by. Why is the EU so anti-consumer? This will just mean higher costs for everyone.

I fear this. If my wife's premium goes up to compensate their reduction in my premium then fair enough. We won't be better or worse off. However, her premiums will go up and no doubt mine will too to cover the "other cost".

Any chance that us men can claim back for the years we've been over charged? I couldn't claim anything from the banks because I've been careful with my money - perhaps I can claim something back from the insurance companies because I've been a careful driver - despite being male!

huckster

Underwriter wrote: »

Well you'd better hope and pray that we do because if not, that is the end of the life insurance industry, and I'm not exaggerating.

I think that this is the big problem with the judgement.

With Car Insurance the Insurers will just take the opportunity to adjust various rating factors. e.g. large premium increase for high risk postcodes.

But with Life Insurance, this is going to be a massive headache and they will have their legal people looking at the judgement to see what changes they will have to make. Would it affect existing annuities or only those taken out after 21/12/2012 ?