Insurance & the elderly

Overforty

I have recently had my car and house insurance renewals and both have risen by vast amounts.
Obviously these new higher prices are generated by an algorithm which knows how old I am.
My thought is that as your age increase after a certain point the increase is greater, not because of any risk but because older people are more likely to accept what ever is quoted rather than phone up and haggle.
What do we think.

SiliconChip

What makes you think that risk doesn't increase with age? Insurers will have vast amount of data and if it shows that older people are more likely to make a claim then the premiums are going to increase (and I say this as someone who is 66 and therefore approaching some of those issues).

DullGreyGuy

Overforty said:

I have recently had my car and house insurance renewals and both have risen by vast amounts.
Obviously these new higher prices are generated by an algorithm which knows how old I am.
My thought is that as your age increase after a certain point the increase is greater, not because of any risk but because older people are more likely to accept what ever is quoted rather than phone up and haggle.
What do we think.

Certainly for some classes, eg car, the risk does go up and so insurers are free to price for that without accusations of illegal discrimination. 

I get the argument about technology, that someone in their 90s may have never touched a computer etc so can't use confused.com etc but that isnt a static thing... 20 years ago they were the same when they were in their 70s but someone in their 70s now is much more likely to have used the internet etc so this doesn't work in the same way. 

I'm not sure why you think they'd more likely just accept it? Having done customer service for brands aimed at younger people and older people the later were much more likely to be on the phone questioning things than the younger (we are talking the infancy of email interaction between big brands and their customers)