Insurance by gender

I really do not understand why (how?) it has become illegal to charge different insurance rates by gender. For centuries, insurance was based purely on RISK. Okay, you can’t usually choose whether to be a woman or man. But, you often can’t choose where you live, so how long will some post-codes continue to be more expensive than others? Risk no longer matters.

This new ruling is ridiculous. The logical extensions of this new law are non-discrimination by age, non-discrimination by location, non-discrimination by poverty – non-discrimination by any measure other than absolute equality for all.

Statistically, women have fewer accidents than men (based on mileage driven) – that’s why they were cheaper to insure. Faster cars cost to more to insure than slower ones, cheaper cars less than expensive cars, younger drivers more than older drivers etc.

So, if I decide to buy a 15th century Grade 1 listed thatched great hall in a flood-plain, on a river bank next to a fireworks factory, I should pay precisely the same house insurance as a new terrace on a hill in a town next to the fire station? Why discriminate by wealth?

If I smoke, eat and drink to excess, take massive risks by professional skiing or sky-diving, by taking bombs apart, by driving a race car for a living, my life insurance should be exactly the same as someone who isn’t exposed to such risks? Why discriminate by job or lifestyle?

Some ladies should take their insurance companies to court – for discrimination in charging the same as men in future, as they are statistically a lower risk…..

Some gentlemen should take their insurance companies to court – to reclaim the excesses charged over the years just because they were male…..

Inmates and Asylums leap to mind.

Is it just me?
Best regards,
Dick

Rosie.and.Dick wrote:

Inmates and Asylums leap to mind.

Really?

I am amazed because for me "Insurance Companies" and "Profit" spring to mind!

But then again, I am just a boorish know-all so what would you expect!

Best regards,

Ian

Hi Ian,

As I understood it from TV reports today, this ruling was from 'The European Courts'. Insurance companies had fought it, but failed. So, they are required, from today, to charge the same insurance rates for men and women drivers - disregarding any known risk factors. Gender equality.

I just thought it was wrong. Maybe I'm completely out of step and living on another planet.

All the best
Dick

Dick,

It was more than a bit tongue in cheek, sorry.

However, one of the things I loathe about Insurance Companies is the way they "Cherry Pick" on any LEGAL basis to maximise their profits.

This results in some companies actually refusing to insure people on the basis of age, address etc and (in the case where the thread has been locked) on the basis of vehicle age. (In that case you could have the most beautifully maintained 17 years old vehicle and they will NOT insure you!)

If you allow Insurance Companies to choose customers by gender then why not let them do it by colour, creed, race etc?

Best regards,

Ian

mikethebike wrote:..........
I am in a good mood after a good round of golf.
Mike

Golf? Is that like "Whist Hum" - another load of old balls going nowhere?

.... and there's a reason I'm not asleep; but don't worry!

Best regards,

Ian

Hi Ian,
Sorry, age has wearied me… and England beat the All Blacks.

It took a long time to find a specialist insurer for a vehicle we two constructed over a period of 6 years – a 1948 Ford F1 pickup body mounted on a 1979 Mercedes G-Wagon chassis and engine. It was fully inspected and registered as a “Mercedes Ford F1”. But someone eventually did, at a reasonable cost.

For years my life insurance had a 150% to 200% loading, but the Army paid 75% of the excess – still expensive. Mind you, I wouldn’t have liked to insure me…

As I got a bit older, the age profile, for cheaper car insurance rates, went up; from 18, to 21, to 25, to 30. My dad’s car insurance rate as a bookie was one of the highest – statistically, apparently.

Thank goodness I’m not a young lad now, driving knackered Frog-eye Sprites, Healey 3000s, TR4s etc. Seems £2000 per year is normal for a hatchback. Ouch.

Best regards
Dick

Rosie.and.Dick wrote:.......

Thank goodness I’m not a young lad now, driving knackered Frog-eye Sprites, Healey 3000s, TR4s etc. Seems £2000 per year is normal for a hatchback. Ouch.

Best regards
Dick

Dick,

Amen to that!!

Ford Popular with a "DON'T put your feet there!" passenger seat! (i.e. move the bit of my Mum's carpet out the way and you will see the road going by!)

"Tread? What's tread?"

Ford Prefect with windscreen wipers that stopped when you put your foot down to overtake anything!

A real sobering moment for me was hiring a car at Norwich airport in about 1990 and on the road to Great Yarmouth discovering that I was tonking along at just over 100 miles per hour; and hadn't noticed!

Having cut my teeth on cars that would only do 65 mph down hill with a following wind my first thought was "My God! In five years time some kid will be able to buy this and it will still do the same top speed with knackered brakes, no tread on the tyres and a driver out of his head on booze or drugs!"

Maybe (just maybe mind) the Insurance Companies are doing us all a favour! (But I doubt it!)

Best regards,

Ian

PS Love the hybrid. (It took a bit of time for the photo to download) Can well understand a certain nervousness from an insurer as all it needs is a huge following cloud of smoke and a lot of rust to look just like some of the pick-ups we saw around South Carolina!

Rosie.and.dick - love the pickup. Made me smile that someone could think of it and actually do it. Nothing o add on the insurance front apart from the relative ease at our age to play one insurer off against the other (sometimes from the same group). One ten minute phone call knocked £105 off my home and contents insurance renewal which apparently is now gender neutral.........

Apparant large price differences are all down to inflation since you were 17. When I was married in 1968 petrol cost 6/- per gallon. That is 30p. Per litre it was 6.6p. It is now 135p - that is a 20.5 times increase.

If you do the sum on beer the price since 1965 is 38 times greater. A Cortina 1200 cost £650 in 1965 - so cars have gone up about 20 times. Average wage in 1965 was £16pw, whereas this year it is £500pw - that is a growth of 31 times.

So, if a young mans insurance now costs £2000, the price in 1965ish would be between £100 and £50. From memory that seems fairly accurate.

The difference is just that our attitudes to prices seem to stay the same over the years. Young people don't seem to mind paying £600 per year for a phone, or gym membership, or Sky subscriptions.

What is different now is that young people don't get paid until they are over 20, they all want to drive at 17, and the general shortness of spending cash due to 'must have' items not invented in our day.

Now, where is the "thanks" button?

Peterm wrote:................. they all want to drive at 17, and the general shortness of spending cash due to 'must have' items not invented in our day.

Ah, that's the rub! They all "want to drive at 17" and so did I - the difference being that I worked my backside off in four different jobs for as little as (in todays terms) 10p an hour to scrape the money together to purchase (for £15) a BSA three-wheeler. (This was so that I could disconnect the reverse gear and drive it on a provisional motorcycle licence without supervision!)

Unfortunately, I then went to sea (as an Officer Cadet at £9.11.8d a month) and returned after my first trip to discover that my Mum had sold the BSA for £10 on the basis that it was cluttering up the backyard and "What do you need a car for? You are at sea most of the time!"

We also had "must have items" such as Dansette record players, transistor radios, the latest 45's from the USA and certain items of dress like crepe soled shoes, drain-pipe trousers and even Wrangler, Levy or Lee jeans!

Kids don't really change with regard to what they want in life but the circumstances around them change and the only reason anyone wasn't working (even if it was only for a pittance) in the 1960's was that they were straight lazy.

On the other hand, is todays "Job Shortage" real? If so, how come all these Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians etc can come over to the UK and find work?

It must be there for local lads if they care to do it; and in Skegness one of the Town Service bus drivers is a young Polish lad who is getting paid exactly the same as a young Brit would be paid so the "working for less" argument isn't always valid.

Hey ho! That's todays history lesson done with!

Best regards,

Ian

Thanks Peterm - a dose of reality, and fascinating.

So, my 'over 50s' van insurance is incredibly cheap - which I always felt it was, but then I'm old and have a clean record and licence. I do remember that my first wreck (a hand-painted Ford Prefect E93A) cost the same to buy as to insure, third party only, - £25. And it had vacuum wipers and an umbrella handbrake that came out in my hand.

How does the same calculation work for house prices? Goodness knows the average house price in the 60s, but if the average now is £170,000, it should work back to something like £6,000 in the 60s? Can anyone remember?

"Must Haves" have mostly missed me - or I've side-stepped them.

Thanks again,
Dick

Hi there,

When I left the Police in 1996 I bought a newly built two-bedroom bungalow in Brigg Lincolnshire (No 4 O'Hanlon Avenue) for £2,400.

It was bought on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage provided by Brigg Town Council at 6 3/8th%. (My father thought I was insane to pay so much but I think that within ten years the rate had climbed to double this!)

My basic pay as a Policeman before I left in 1966 was £740 a year for a 44 hour week (which is one reason why I left) and £950 for a 40 hour week as an Operator on the Petrofina Terminal at North Killingholme.

In other words my first step on the property ladder was equivalent to just over 2.5 times my basic salary.

My wife didn't need to work at the time and I think that since the 60's, in relation to salaries, the cost of houses and the general cost of living have gone through the roof!

Best regards,

Ian

My first house, in 1967, was a standard 3 bed Wimpey semi, and cost me £4000 in a good area of Liverpool. My first months take home pay was £66, so adding a bit on for tax, I was earning about £100, that is £1200 PA. As it happens the same house was up for sale last time I looked, at £160k in really depressed market. That is a 40 times increase. I'm not 100% sure what the grade I was on at the time earns today, but I seem to recall from a recent reunion it was about £30k, so that is a 25 times increase. Unfortunately the growth of computerisation means that whereas the bulk of BT at the time was in my grade at my age, now only about 10% are. the rest earn much less. Also, the overall numbers of people have been decimated by productivity and hiving off. So I doubt if there are a tenth of the people in BT Liverpool today who can afford my home as a first time buyer.

It is a sobering fact that the pan European and US economic crisis has inconrovertably demonstrated, that all the food, goods, roads and medicine the entire population needs to live is now produced by only a third of the population. This fact is covered by the massive growth of useless services, like dog washers, and useless products, like your annual new iphone. However, we could actually be as productive as a planet with about 500m people. The rest of us are just consumers of oxgen and creaters of environmental damage.

Peterm wrote:............
The rest of us are just consumers of oxgen and creaters of environmental damage.

Agreed!

However, there are more than a few politicians I could nominate for a "Stop the Oxygen" prize!

Best regards,


PS
However, I'm afraid that you did shoot yourself in the foot with ".... in a good area of Liverpool." as the nearest one I know is called Manchester!

Hi folks,

I found a 'Nationwide' list of UK average house prices since 1952. True, an average is just that; depends on area, local conditions and demand....
That said, the list covers most types of houses (new, old etc). Perhaps the easiest to compare is 'New Houses' prices - perhaps labour and materials could be a bit more 'average'?

Anyway, the average price for new 1965 houses was £3800 - presumably more expensive in the South than the North...
Average for 1981 was £30,000 - exactly what we paid for our first house in 1981 in Devon. Phew. We had looked at starter homes for the same price, so that works.
Average for 2012 is £172,000. That's roughly 45 times - higher than most items, and the biggest expenditure of one's life.

Our mortgage offer, 25 years, was a max of 3.5 times our combined salaries (mine and half wife's) with a third deposit (£10,000). We were both over 30, and had good secure jobs, and had saved most of the deposit.
Interest rates at about 8% were changing but we took a chance on a fixed 10% for 5 years - and the rate rose to 14%. Good bet.

We lived with the house contents, and borrowed/donated kit until we could afford to buy outright. Must Haves didn't come into it, as we spent most of our income on the mortgage and just living - no new bathroom, or kitchen or new furniture. My mum's old twin-tub lasted for years...

Happy days.
Best regards,
Dick

Sounds familiar....

Our first house was £17000 in 1980 and then £33000 larger property in 1983 followed by a much larger £67000 in 1987 (I worked in the mid east at the time). Now worth about £350K, which is basically has been a good investment. We've lived here since then and have no desire to move.

now what was the original post about? Oh yes - insurance.... Joint policy holders we have managed to keep the insurance for both house and contents under control by shopping around and not bothering with Meerkats too much

Dutto,
However, I'm afraid that you did shoot yourself in the foot with ".... in a good area of Liverpool." as the nearest one I know is called Manchester!

My legendary scouse sense of humour is wearing a bit thin due to over after 68 years of repetition of the same racist jokes. I don't suppose you would have commented if I had written about house prices in Lahore, Lagos, Latvia or Lagos. (No, emoticons don't change the sentiment do they)

Dutto you've gone and put your foot in it again, now apologise to the nice man, john

Peterm wrote:............

My legendary scouse sense of humour is wearing a bit thin due to over after 68 years of repetition of the same racist jokes.

...............

I don't think I've seen that Paul McCartney smile for the last twenty-five years so I'm not sure what a "scouse sense of humour" actually refers to; but if it means laughing at a Jimmy Tarbuck joke then please count me out!

Personally, I come from God's Country (Derbyshire) and yet my far from legendary sense of humour has remained intact for the thousand or so times people have asked me "Where about in Yorkshire do you come from."

I'm also confused about the term "racist". I appreciate that Liverpool have to go to foreign lands to find managers and players for their rapidly declining football team but I think that the average Liverpudlian is still more or less the same race as the rest of us!

I hope this apology is sufficient for everyone's needs.

Best regards,

Ian

Peterm wrote:My first house, in 1967, was a standard 3 bed Wimpey semi, and cost me £4000 in a good area of Liverpool. My first months take home pay was £66, so adding a bit on for tax, I was earning about £100, that is £1200 PA. .................

Hi there,

Back in the 1960's there wasn't much concern about "gender equality". As a general rule, the women stayed at home and looked after the kids and the house whilst the men went out to work. In many households the lady of the house got her "housekeeping money" and the man kept the rest to pay for everything else.

In my family, going into any form of debt (apart from a house mortgage) was regarded as being almost as bad as standing in the middle of the street and exposing yourself. We were paid in Cash. In my case, payday was on Thursday and with the exception of our "contingency money" (about £2 a week that was put into a savings account at the bank every Friday) almost every penny that came into the house was spoken for. Everything from milk to holidays was allocated a certain amount of money and put to one side for just that purpose.

BUT WE COULD AFFORD TO BUY A HOUSE!!!

Looking at the figures provided, in the mid-sixties it took somewhere like 2.5 to 3.5 times a young man's pay to buy a house.

With £172,000 as the "average price" today a young man would have to earn somewhere between £50,000 to £70,000 a year for the same wages/house price parity!

I'm not sure what a young man would be paid nowadays for loading road and rail tankers in the UK but I doubt if they take home £50,000 for a 40 hour week!

Oh, by the way, back in those days "The Man From The Pru" wasn't James Bond's latest enemy! He was the man who walked up and down every street in the country at least once a month and in all weathers to collect "gender free" insurance payments for such diverse policies as Life, House, Car etc.

The poor sod who visited my Mum got a sixpence (2.5p in new money) every week for the four Life policies that she had taken out on Dad, herself, my sister and me.

Some time around 1948, to cut down on wages, the company sacked most of their Reps and issued customers with a clock! It ran for a week and every time it needed winding up you had to drop a sixpence through a slot in the top. The Rep came on a quarterly basis to empty the clock and just before Christmas paid out a one-shilling bonus if all payments were up to date!

Come to think of it, maybe this company is the reason for my antipathy towards Insurance Companies! I got clattered twice because of that clock!! The first time was for ruining the payment slot whilst attempting to steal from it with a screwdriver and the second time was for breaking the winding mechanism by fiercely over-winding it (probably in the hope that it would spew forth sixpences)!

Best regards,

mikethebike wrote:Hi Ian, Not sure your statistics are correct.
More than one type of average,i know of 3.
However i am sure up north as we say you can get a house for 50 thousand.
You don,t have to start with a 4 bed detached.
back in the UK

Mike

Mike,

At the time I bought my wee new detached bungalow in Brigg for £2,400 you could buy a two-up/two-down terrace house in Louth for £800.

I think that is the one that costs £50,000 now.

Best regards,

Ian