Gender Pricing – for better or for worse
Due to a European court ruling in early 2011, changes are about to happen which will affect almost all of us that take out some form of personal insurance from January 2013.
The ruling stipulated that there must be gender equality in pricing for risk. This means that from next January insurers are not able to consider sex as a factor in arriving at the premiums on any policy.
This will affect us all in different ways but it should mean that where there have been differences in premiums between men and women, premiums will be the same. In theory, this means that men should see cheaper car insurance and cheaper life insurance and women should see reductions in the cost of health and medical insurance and better annuity rates at retirement. This is because these groups have benefitted from gender pricing in the past.
In reality though, these savings are unlikely to be seen because a number of other factors are conspiring to increase premiums, including a change in the level of taxation applied to insurance companies. It is expected that these increases will wipe out the bulk of the savings made for the groups mentioned above. The down side to this is that the half who would have paid more will be even worse off leaving men paying more for medical insurance & income protection insurance and getting even worse annuity rates at retirement. Women will suffer higher for motor insurance and pay more for life insurance from next year.
With this in mind it is going to be prudent to review your insurance needs this summer (thus giving enough time to make amendments if necessary). So now is the time to complete a comprehensive review of your life and health insurance needs and current provision. To organise this, please speak to us at Chilvester. I am afraid that we are unable to help you with your motor insurance; for this you need to speak to the meerkats!! Simples!