Disability descrimination in home insurance?

Imnoexpert_2

I just did a comparison on my home insurance and when I put my occupation as retired it comes up with a cheapest price of £217.30. When I change it to unemployed due to disability and all else is the same the cheapest company drops out of the list and the cheapest is £249.82.

Since I am both retired (over 60 and not looking for work) and not working due to disability I guess I can choose what I put but I think it shows the industry in a poor light.

Yes I know they can probably argue that there is some other reason for the difference and I wouldn't win a court case but..........

Is there a disability friendly company?

Quentin

Far from discriminating, that option would be disability friendly were you not retired.


Unemployed would be more expensive than unemployed due to disability

Imnoexpert_2

As I said someone could argue that there is a rationale. Quentin you have done that and its a fair comment. Insurers don't like unemployed people whatever the reason.

I hadn't done it before so after I got your reply I changed it to just 'unemployed' and everything else the same. The company that was cheapest when I put 'retired' has now reapperared as the cheapest at £252 80. So you are right being 'unemployed due to disability' has overall saved me £3 from being 'unemployed'. But nowhere near the £217.30 for being 'retired'

I don't want to make a meal of all this because I need to just buy insurance not launch a campaign but it seems that this one company which is cheapest for me is less willing to have my business once they know I am disabled because relative to other insurers as well in absolute terms they are more expensive for me.

InsideInsurance

Insurers cannot discriminate for disability. Therefore if there is a difference in price with the SAME insurer they must be able to statistically prove that those with disability either have more claims or more expensive claims.

Given we are talking aggregators here though there could be a host of other things happening. It could be a translation issue that the one that dropped off is having. Some insurers wont quote when people "change" something that they feel should be set in stone in fear its either a fraud risk or a competitor trying to work out their pricing etc

Imnoexpert_2

Thanks Inside Insurance I hadn't realised changing details and re-running the quote can have that effect. I do it partly out of curiosity. For example the cost in higher premiums resulting from the claim I made last year makes me wish I hadn't bothered claiming.

InsideInsurance

Imnoexpert wrote: »

Thanks Inside Insurance I hadn't realised changing details and re-running the quote can have that effect. I do it partly out of curiosity. For example the cost in higher premiums resulting from the claim I made last year makes me wish I hadn't bothered claiming.

You will also find some insurers, eg Admiral, will ask a lot of questions if you go on and buy at anything but the highest quote. There is a thread on here from yesterday where someone experimented changing who the Main Driver is on the policy and now Admiral are now questioning that its the low risk driver that they bought at rather than the high risk driver that they also got quotes with.

If you want to experiment, do so with slightly altered details and only quote and buy with your genuine details. Given you have IP logging/ cookies etc even this isnt fool proof but is a better way of doing things

CKhalvashi

InsideInsurance wrote: »

If you want to experiment, do so with slightly altered details and only quote and buy with your genuine details. Given you have IP logging/ cookies etc even this isnt fool proof but is a better way of doing things

In addition to this, either using a site like TOR and refreshing IP each time or resetting cookies is a way to get around this, but again only if using different details each time.