Over 80

Ifan

Today I received an unsolicited email from Direct line to "a Skoda driver"
wanting my business. I filled in my details and at the end it said "error, over 80". This was a lie because there was no error and I was just telling the truth. This is surely age discrimination. Even if they are allowed to do this they should say, before people start giving details, that over 80s should not apply.
I get the feeling that an insurer that acts in this way will very likey do their best to avoid settling a claim.
I have come across this practice previously by some other insurers and in future will draw attention to every one. Even if they don't want to be polite they could stop the process as soon as the d.o.b is inserted.

System

Unfortunately, a large percentage of insurance companies do not want to insure the over 80s for motor cover, although many will renew policies for existing customers who reach their 80th birthday and onwards (Captive clients).

Age discrimination does not seem to apply since insurers use the business decision argument to say who they are willing to do business with.

However, if all insurance companies used the same criteria and stopped insuring the over 80s, then something would need to be done, surely.
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P.S.
You may find this abi document of interest : http://www.abi.org.uk/Publications/24991.pdf
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vaio

BAA1 wrote: »

......

Age discrimination does not seem to apply since insurers use the business decision argument to say who they are willing to do business with.......

Replace "age" with "race" and discrimination has been illegal since the '70s

Replace "age" with "gender" and discrimination has been illegal since the European court got involved last year.

Hopefully by the time I get to 70/80 the same will apply to age

InsideInsurance

The fact the form asks for you to complete the whole first page before rejecting to quote is a practicality of the fact their site is built using traditional web site methodologies which prevents validation as you go along but does help ensure compatibility with the hundreds of different web browsers on PCs, Macs, phones, tablets etc etc

dunstonh

Replace "age" with "gender" and discrimination has been illegal since the European court got involved last year.

Not yet it isnt. Later in the year.

Hopefully by the time I get to 70/80 the same will apply to age

Problem will then be that you will pay more in other areas where those over a certain age get discounts because of it.

Just_Some_Guy

The EU ruling on gender was is and forever shall be stupid and if they pass something similar about age then they'll just assume everyone's a 17 year old male and charge you £5k a year for cover. Can't wait!

vaio

or base the premium on your actual driving history so only new drivers without such history will get the assumptions made.

As a 50 something with a good record my premiums reflect that and I can't see any argument why that should change because of my gender or when I hit some arbitrary age

InsideInsurance

Premium is based on actual history but it has to be based on both a history for you (hence they ask how long you've drive, how long youve lived in the UK, how many claims in the last 5 years etc) and history of their complete book (if you've just moved home to a new city they cannot just rely on your historic theft claim history as the new city could me massively worse for vehicle thefts).

The reality is as we get older our senses, reactions and habits change which means our risk profile changes. Your personal history gives a basis to find others who were similar to you in the past and you can then see what, on average, happened to them as they aged.

System

Everyone over 70 drives perfectly, until the day when they run into something, and then they stop driving. The difficulty is predicting whether that moment will arise when they are 71 or 103.

lisyloo

There isn't actually a huge age discrimination problem folr older people in my exeperience.
My FIL is 83 and whilst the choice may be lower the premiums are not huge (I think his is about £350).
It's nothing like the discrimination that young people are facing.
I don't have the data to say whether the relatively small increase is justified.
But I can say from experience (of arranging it for 3 years) that there are not massive rises anything like young people are facing.

It is anoying if you don't get told this until you've gone to a lot of effort.
The best approach may be to use a search engine and then the ones that don't want your business are automatically exlcluded.

mikey72

BAA1 wrote: »

Unfortunately, a large percentage of insurance companies do not want to insure the over 80s for motor cover, although many will renew policies for existing customers who reach their 80th birthday and onwards (Captive clients).

Age discrimination does not seem to apply since insurers use the business decision argument to say who they are willing to do business with.

However, if all insurance companies used the same criteria and stopped insuring the over 80s, then something would need to be done, surely.

[FONT=&quot]P.S.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]You may find this abi document of interest : http://www.abi.org.uk/Publications/24991.pdf[/FONT]

As the ABI report states

"For new customers, insurers commonly have age limits in the 80s."

It'll be ironic when all the "I'm alright, 17 year olds are bad drivers and have to pay more, I'm not subsidising them" realise the roles have reversed, but with another 20 or 30 years of "loss making" to pay the insurers for.
And if they're really lucky, all the "uninsured drivers costing up £50" will have been addressed, so if you drive uninsured at 80, maybe you will have 10 years in jail and your car crushed at last.

I suppose we could all move house, and live somewhere with a bus stop in front of the garden, and take our little wheeled trolley out shopping every day.