MSE News: Insurance costs to soar as gender discrimination banned

jamesd

pinkteapot wrote: »

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.

It's discriminatory but all it'll do is further push men away from buying annuities. They already aren't very good value and this just makes it worse. Pension drawdown limits may also become lower for men since those are based on life expectancy. The solution to that is to be sure that you have significant non-pension capital that you can draw on at whatever rate is required.

I suppose one remedy would be to try to end the discrimination in medical care that partially causes women to live longer than men. Maybe blocking new treatment types for women until there's equalisation of life expectancies would help. If they ever do get to be equal that would end the discrimination on the annuity side as well as the medical one.

lisyloo wrote: »

Scarlett - under current legislation when you get to 75 you will HAVE to buy an annuity.

Under current legislation and proposed legislation you do not have to buy an annuity at any age. Under current rules at age 75 you merely switch your pension pot from unsecured to alternatively secured drawdown if you don't want to buy an annuity. Income drawdown just got a lot more attractive for men.

castanley

The sooner we leave this ridiculous European Union the better. Insurance is based on risk. Young men are higher risk than young women - fact!

Arthurian

Perhaps the insurance industry should repackage their products as "bets". A middle aged female could perhaps go to an online "betting" company and bet that she will have fewer accidents this year than a young male driver. The company computer would work out the [STRIKE]premium[/STRIKE] odds.

lisyloo

Why did you bother to post your own little biological determinism theory?

Huh?? It's not my theory, its' natural instinct.
Just watch a few wildlife programs.
That's what males are programmed to do.
Fight over resources (women and food). That often means competing with each other and fighting for territory.

It's an explanation.
Insurers use claim statistics.

Geordie_bear

Men drive a lot more miles then women so instead of having stats for accidents of both men and women it would be interesting if the insurance companies changed this to a more fairer system of 'accidents per miles' driven.

Geordie_bear

Underwriter wrote: »

I really struggle to understand this logic. What's being able to decide your gender got to do with it? If statistics show that you are a higher risk, then you are a higher risk, end of story. All insurance is based on generalisations (it's called risk pooling) and the most basic pool is gender. Women have lower mortality at all ages, so they are charged less for life insurance. Men have higher motor insurance claims at young ages, so they are charged more. Men don't live as long as women, so they have better annuity rates.

By having to charge everyone the same we are treating them unfairly, there is no statistical reason for charging the premiums we are going to have to charge. Everyone has lost out today, including insurance companies who are a)a business which is required to make profit for the shareholders and b) very unhappy at having to charge premiums which are not statisticially justified.

but surely instead of penilising male drives they should be charging more for those that do higher mileage?!

MsHoarder

plumber2009 wrote: »

So if a driver (man or woman) decides to crash into me, how would the driver know wether i was a man or a woman.

An accident can happen to anyone at any time. I dont give a toss what the insurance comanies say. I see it all for myself on the roads everyday. Also young women drivers today are worse than men.

Tougher penalties for using mobile phones and women messing around with makeup while driving should be introduced as these are the main causes of accidents and not gender.

The cost to an insurer is the person who caused the accident, not the person who was crashed into. So the gender of the innocent party is irrelavent.

And the make-up applying shunts (which I would not do) are low cost which generally only cost the insurer a bumper repair. The expensive incidents are the high-speed crashes, and these are most likely to be young men (shown by insurance co statistics).

pinkteapot

Miles driven is a factor in price - that's why you're asked for it when obtaining a quote.

Ihatecameron

IMO insurance should not be based on anything other than the value of a car and there should be set prices for each category of vehicle. As it stands insurance companies appear to name prices at random and vary wildly between companies.
What we need is set prices to prevent them ripping people off with a whole host of ridiculous criteria based on age and sex, the area you live in, where you park etc which is a load of nonsense.

ashleypride

Ihatecameron wrote: »

IMO insurance should not be based on anything other than the value of a car and there should be set prices for each category of vehicle. As it stands insurance companies appear to name prices at random and vary wildly between companies.
What we need is set prices to prevent them ripping people off with a whole host of ridiculous criteria based on age and sex, the area you live in, where you park etc which is a load of nonsense.

How exactly is where you park or the area you live in nonsense?