Cursed Car Insurance Birth Dates (DOBs)

fiscoking

Hi,

I was shopping around for car insurance today. Tried a few different comparison websites and was playing with the details to get the quote down.

Today I tried changing the date of birth (DOB), by just 2 days. Month and year correct. Just to try and understand 'how it works'.

Given I've been driving over 30 years (claim & points free in the last 5), you would think this wouldn't change anything, but it can double (or halve) your quote, as it did mine. See the quotes below. Other than the birth date being out by 2 days, everything else was the same (car , address, cover type etc).

(14th of the month) https://ibb.co/Dfrhwqw
(16th of the month) https://ibb.co/1MD6Mft

The correct DOB more than doubled my quote for some reason (238 - 530).  I wasn't just one insurer either. My DOB is non-gratis at quite a few insurers apparently.

I'm not suggesting people use a fake DOB to get a lower quote (you'll be uninsured), but still. There must be many people with my DOB that make claims (?). A new one for me. Talk about random.

Found a cheaper quote in the end on another comparison website, so the lesson here is that you have to use multiple comparison websites.

DullGreyGuy

fiscoking said:

Hi,

I was shopping around for car insurance today. Tried a few different comparison websites and was playing with the details to get the quote down.

Today I tried changing the date of birth (DOB), by just 2 days. Month and year correct. Just to try and understand 'how it works'.

Given I've been driving over 30 years (claim & points free in the last 5), you would think this wouldn't change anything, but it can double (or halve) your quote, as it did mine. See the quotes below. Other than the birth date being out by 2 days, everything else was the same (car , address, cover type etc).

(14th of the month) https://ibb.co/Dfrhwqw
(16th of the month) https://ibb.co/1MD6Mft

The correct DOB more than doubled my quote for some reason (238 - 530).  I wasn't just one insurer either. My DOB is non-gratis at quite a few insurers apparently.

I'm not suggesting people use a fake DOB to get a lower quote (you'll be uninsured), but still. There must be many people with my DOB that make claims (?). A new one for me. Talk about random.

Found a cheaper quote in the end on another comparison website, so the lesson here is that you have to use multiple comparison websites.

Which did you do first, the correct DoB or incorrect?

All three of the quotes are from Hastings, what were the quotes like on the others further down the list?

cymruchris

Changing things around (using incorrect data with your personal name and address) is a dangerous thing to do. If you keep asking for quotes with different information - at best it'll flag up that you're trying to manipulate the system - at worst I understand they can put a fraud marker against you. Others might have more knowledge than me on this - but I'd just see be very careful in what you're doing!

fiscoking

>>Which did you do first...
Correct first, then incorrect and the quote went down. I put the correct one back in at the 3rd attempt and it went back up again. So results were consistent.

>>what were the quotes like on the others..
Many different insurers were cheaper with the incorrect DOB.

Saga ended up being the cheapest. Using different comparison websites, I've had about 4 quotes from Saga and all the prices were different. The MSE Saga quote was the cheapest though.

fiscoking

>>Changing things around (using incorrect data with your personal name and address) is a dangerous thing to do. 

For a quote that's unlikely IMHO.
I cannot stop someone from entering my details into a free website and changing them around. Anyone can do that if they know your name and address. My details are all over the internet as I'm a company director, and I've had my identity stolen many times with money taken from my accounts - but that's a different story.

Once you've paid for a policy then that's different, and it will be expensive, and quite possibly fraud as there's money involved with deliberate deception. The fraud part applies once money is involved. Until then it's just data going back and forth.

FYI, following my id theft many years ago, I always put a fake name and dob into free websites. When letters drop through the door addressed to Genghis Khan I know it's junk mail...straight into the bin.

DullGreyGuy

fiscoking said:

>>Which did you do first...
Correct first, then incorrect and the quote went down. I put the correct one back in at the 3rd attempt and it went back up again. So results were consistent.

>>what were the quotes like on the others..
Many different insurers were cheaper with the incorrect DOB.

Its unlikely the aggregator reruns the results when its the identical data set again so its just pulling the previous results back up when you return it to the correct DoB.

There are a range of possibilities of what it could be from information on CUE that they find with your correct DoB but dont with the wrong, that they are credit scoring and so again what they get back -v- the nonmatch and how they score that, companies do do random price changes to test sensitivity and in principle DoB could be used as the seed but the swings are very big for price testing. 

Doing a random quote, with fake details, get the same price with the two DoB but then neither will have created any matches in secondary databases.

fiscoking

>>they are credit scoring..
Soft credit searches - yes - but my credit score is excellent. You'd think a correct DOB would yield a lower premium.
There could be other searches as you say. I've had some 100% non-fault claims paid out by the other party, but they were over 5 years ago.
Anyway, not much you can do about your DOB, other than just try different websites. FYI, Saga's own website was the most expensive of all the Saga quotes. Crazy.

SiliconChip

fiscoking said:

>>they are credit scoring..
Soft credit searches - yes - but my credit score is excellent.

Your "credit score" is an irrelevent made up number that nobody other than you can see. What @DullGreyGuy was referring to was the credit scoring done by the aggregator/insurer using their own data and your credit records to come up with their own score. Their results may agree with the "score" that the credit reference agencies give (or sell) you, or may be completely different, you'll never know as they won't tell you, but you cannot in any way rely on the number that you see,

DullGreyGuy

SiliconChip said:

fiscoking said:

>>they are credit scoring..
Soft credit searches - yes - but my credit score is excellent.

Your "credit score" is an irrelevent made up number that nobody other than you can see. What DullGreyGuy was referring to was the credit scoring done by the aggregator/insurer using their own data and your credit records to come up with their own score. Their results may agree with the "score" that the credit reference agencies give (or sell) you, or may be completely different, you'll never know as they won't tell you, but you cannot in any way rely on the number that you see,

At least one insurer used to use the "made up" number, at least when they first started using credit scoring as a rating factor. Its likely that if they saw the claims correlation they were expecting that they may have then invested more in coming up with their own scoring system but its the only real world example of the marketing gimmick that is the CRA scores actually being used for anything that I've come across. 

SiliconChip

DullGreyGuy said:

SiliconChip said:

fiscoking said:

>>they are credit scoring..
Soft credit searches - yes - but my credit score is excellent.

Your "credit score" is an irrelevent made up number that nobody other than you can see. What DullGreyGuy was referring to was the credit scoring done by the aggregator/insurer using their own data and your credit records to come up with their own score. Their results may agree with the "score" that the credit reference agencies give (or sell) you, or may be completely different, you'll never know as they won't tell you, but you cannot in any way rely on the number that you see,

At least one insurer used to use the "made up" number, at least when they first started using credit scoring as a rating factor. Its likely that if they saw the claims correlation they were expecting that they may have then invested more in coming up with their own scoring system but its the only real world example of the marketing gimmick that is the CRA scores actually being used for anything that I've come across. 

Does that mean third parties such as insurance companies are permitted to access the credit scores calculated by CRAs? I've always assumed from every relevant comment on the Credit Cards board that the only people who see the score are the person who it relates to and the CRA, but perhaps everybody else is making an incorrect assumption too.

DullGreyGuy

SiliconChip said:

DullGreyGuy said:

SiliconChip said:

fiscoking said:

>>they are credit scoring..
Soft credit searches - yes - but my credit score is excellent.

Your "credit score" is an irrelevent made up number that nobody other than you can see. What DullGreyGuy was referring to was the credit scoring done by the aggregator/insurer using their own data and your credit records to come up with their own score. Their results may agree with the "score" that the credit reference agencies give (or sell) you, or may be completely different, you'll never know as they won't tell you, but you cannot in any way rely on the number that you see,

At least one insurer used to use the "made up" number, at least when they first started using credit scoring as a rating factor. Its likely that if they saw the claims correlation they were expecting that they may have then invested more in coming up with their own scoring system but its the only real world example of the marketing gimmick that is the CRA scores actually being used for anything that I've come across. 

Does that mean third parties such as insurance companies are permitted to access the credit scores calculated by CRAs? I've always assumed from every relevant comment on the Credit Cards board that the only people who see the score are the person who it relates to and the CRA, but perhaps everybody else is making an incorrect assumption too.

They're allowed to, just any lender is going to have its own views and wouldn't want it, especially when you have the likes of Experian a while back offering an extra 50 points to subscribers willing to answer some additional questions.

The insurer in question had some hypothesis on how credit score, claims experience and pricing sensitivity could all be connected. Option 1 was to spend £1.5m developing the rating engine based on the generic score, pay £X to the CRA for the generic score, run it for a while and then consider a second phase of refinement that is unlikely to have an major duplication of work. Option 2 was spend circa £3m in developing a more sophisticated rating engine, pay circa £3X to the CRAs and about £400,000 to some credit rating experts. With either route you may find the correlation doesn't exist or isnt strong enough so may want to abandon it after circa 2 years.

Others are right, no lender uses it. They may not be 100% correct that no one at all uses it. I was involved in the original (option 1) project but didnt stay around to see the outcome or if a phase 2 or abandonment happened.