It seems that motoring Mums and daughters are the silent audience that car insurers are targeting from December onwards so they can underwrite more profitable business in future.

This is unfair treatment of women drivers however you look at it and nobody, other than FOXY Lady Drivers Club of course, seems prepared to stand up for women’s best interests here.

Reading about the subject I find that young women take an average of 51.9 lessons from qualified driving instructors compared to 36.2 for young men (DfT research 2004).

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why most young women drivers are safer and more considerate than many young men?

And why it makes little sense to rate young men and young women drivers as the same motor car insurance risk; which is precisely what is due to happen as a result of the forthcoming gender equality ruling in December 2012. Which is deeply unfair to most women drivers because it flies in the face of years of statistics that prove different gender motoring profiles.

To the extent of being sexist and ageist even?

Add to this the perennial debate that young drivers need more lessons such as taking a PassPlus course to gain insurance discounts…

Yet if I had invested in 15 more lessons than my male counterpart before passing my test (at an average £20 per lesson that’s c£300 more I’d have spent), I’d feel I had paid enough already. And if that difference was PassPlus or got me an insurance discount, I’d say that was self evident.

Like it or not driving ability is a gender thing and age is a key consideration too. Young men are naturally more confident drivers (it’s proven to be because of testosterone levels) than many young women hence their seeming to need fewer lessons before passing their test.

But this is but a false dawn because statistics confirm men attract 92 per cent of all driving convictions and 98 per cent of convictions for dangerous driving. So the driving test isn’t preparing them for a safe driving career whereas perhaps more lessons might…

According to the UK Treasury, taking gender out of the car insurance equation will result in a general levelling of premiums, with women under 45 paying an extra £920 million a year with men paying £620 million less. Women under 25 could see their premiums leap by a quarter, while men the same age will save 10 per cent. And there’s an interesting £300 million gap…

The outcome is clear – simply raising insurance prices for women isn’t going to result in fewer accidents – all it will result in is that young women pay for accidents they don’t cause and insurers get richer.

Or put another way – women drivers are being taken to the cleaners.

FOXY Steph

“What you need is sustained outrage – there’s far too much unthinking respect given to authority” Molly Ivins, American humorist and political commentator 1944 -2007

Last year Juliane Kokott a German mother of six and EU Equality Commissioner passed a ruling so that women drivers are to pay the same motor premiums as men from December 2012.

How she must dislike her own gender despite our safer driving records.

As such she has surely opened the door to potential claims of ageism and sexism in the face of statistical evidence that most young women are safer drivers than many young men who are known to cause the majority of the UK’s fatal, serious and very expensive road accidents.

But why has she done this?

Q    Will this ruling save young lives?
A    No. It might even encourage more young men to drive than before because of cheaper car insurance for them.

Q    If this was your insurance business would you charge cautious and feckless drivers the same premiums for the same cover?
A    Of course not.

Q    Who will benefit most from this?
A    Young men and motor insurers because female premiums will rise a lot and male premiums will fall a bit, leaving more profit in between.

Q    Who is footing this bill to include the cost of so many road accidents caused by men?
A    Female motorists.

Call it equality if you like but it isn’t fair on UK women drivers.

Expect to hear more from me about this throughout 2012 as car insurance premiums for women drivers start to rise…

What do you think?

FOXY Steph

A recent Freedom of Information request revealed that c4,000 drivers were banned from the roads in 2009 due to poor eyesight and a new study suggests that 2.7m motorists would fail their driving test today for the same reason.

Which is yet another good reason to commence interim refresher driving tests methinks, to keep us all up to date with the latest rules and regulations and to give us the peace of mind needed to know we’re safe to drive.

New research from esure car insurance reveals that one in twelve motorists (eight per cent) are not able to read a license plate from 20 metres, which would result in them automatically failing their driving test if taken again.

Almost half of motorists (45 per cent) admitted their eyesight had deteriorated since they first took their test (no surprise there…) with nearly one in three admitting to asking passengers to read road signs for them.

It is suggested that we Brits favour vanity over safety when it comes to our driving because nearly a quarter of motorists polled (24 per cent) have driven without our glasses despite being prescribed them. I suspect that few women drivers realise they are required by law to immediately book an eye test if they have any sight concerns. The research revealed that the average motorist waits three years to have an eye test, while one in ten motorists (10 per cent) confessed that they had not had an eye exam in the last ten years. I am confident I was once married to one of these…

Mike Pickard, Head of Risk and Underwriting at esure car insurance, said: “While the number of motorists banned from driving due to poor eyesight is increasing, it’s shocking to see how many motorists have concerns about not having twenty-twenty vision but are still happy to drive.

“We urge all motorists to have their eyes examined regularly and to make sure they always wear their glasses if required whilst driving.  Failing to do so could land you a hefty fine and poses a danger to both themselves and other road users.”

Hear, hear Mike. Presumably the drivers that were banned had their eyes tested at some stage and were deemed to be unsafe at the wheel. I am not aware of eyesight being tested after an accident although this could be a contributory factor of course. I imagine (but the study doesn’t say this) that this condition is largely down to old age or a known medical condition.

But it is a useful reminder to us all of course, says she smugly, within days of her visit to SpecSavers in Worthing…

FOXY Steph

Women drivers who are interested in their personal and family motoring safety should consider joining FOXY Lady Drivers Club -  to stay up to date with the latest motoring advice, information and special services available, like free car checks.

Did we want equality or simply fairness?

Many motor insurers are adopting a Pontius Pilate approach to drivers under 25 which amounts to unfair age discrimination against young women who are safer drivers than young men.

Young women are not the same insurance risk as young men. In general, women take longer to pass their test, are less confident and less likely to speed compared to their young male counterparts. Statistics confirm it is young men who are responsible for the majority of serious and fatal road accidents.

I can understand why some motor insurers decline insurance for male motorists aged under 25. The evidence is written large and clear in the UK’s road accident statistics. And of course, some insurers see this as a business opportunity, charging eye-watering premiums that some say are actively encouraging the claims culture to recoup the premium cost… If true, this would be a self-fulfilling and self-defeating circle until the insurance industry gets its act together and agrees a strategic approach towards the young male driving risk.

As things stand, by refusing to underwrite ALL motorists who are under 25, many insurers are effectively discriminating against young women drivers who are the safer and better car insurance risk. These motorists have LESS choice of insurers so available rates are LESS competitive. Young women are therefore being tarred with the same risk brush as young men and are having to pay MORE than they would for their car insurance otherwise, simply because of their age.

Why is that happening now? First of all, it doesn’t make commercial sense because the sooner insurers start their customer relationships with women the more likely they are to reap our loyalty and referrals. Secondly insurers aren’t required to charge men and women the same car insurance premiums until the EU equality ruling takes effect in December 2012. When premiums will rise a lot for all females of course.

How can this be fair for female motorists? Why isn’t anyone standing up for our rights here? Has it ever been any different I wonder…

Some say that all these efforts to increase rates and reduce risk are designed so that insurers can regain lost profits after some lean and excessively accident prone years.

Hence the average 40% increase in rates in 2011 to date. And which seems to have happened without anyone needing to approve this level of increase.

Fortunately both the Ministry for Justice (MoJ) and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) have been/are looking at different aspects of how the car insurance market is working so we can only hope that the issue of fairness will be addressed alongside that of equality.

Roll on the Ministry of Justice’s implementation of the ban on personal accident referral fees (it’s a start) and the OFT’s Call for Evidence review looking at ways to improve how the car insurance market is working.

FOXY Lady Drivers Club will be explaining to the OFT why this market isn’t operating fairly at present for women drivers with a particular emphasis on young women under 25 years old.

Please contact me via steph@foxyladydrivers.com if you have any recent experience about motor insurance premium hikes and/or claims/accident handling to add weight to our submission.

FOXY Steph

Have I got this right?

Is there such a thing as a poor rather than rich insurance company?

One of the reasons I ask, if I heard this correctly in the first place, is because I distinctly remember reading that insurers hadn’t made money from car premiums for a good few years; all to do with accident claims and associated legal expenses apparently.

But this clearly isn’t the whole story as in the case of Admiral who have just declared pre-tax profits from January to June 2011 of £160.6m, up by a dramatic 27% compared with the same period last year. And total sales for these six months rose by more than 50% to pass the £1 billion turnover mark representing 3.15 million customers, up from 2.37 million in 2010.

Nowadays Admiral is a global insurance business, but these are the brand names most of us will recognise in the UK…

Admiral    Typically for those who pay higher than average premiums such as young drivers and those living in cities with higher risk ratings. Also offers multi vehicle policies.

Bell    Mainly for drivers with a Zero no claims bonus.

Diamond    As the song goes ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ and this Diamond sells insurance products to women.
NB: Whilst premiums are said to rise for females to meet EU equality demands from December 2012, will they need to when young men (the expensive risk) are unlikely to want to buy a product designed for females? So there is no reason to common-rate premiums surely…

elephant.co.uk    A wholly online car insurance service with lower overheads and prices as a result.

Confused.com    One of the best known UK insurance comparison websites including online quotes from all the major car insurance websites.

As impressive as all this profit is, we are told that Admiral’s loss ratio has increased significantly ie the amount paid out in claims divided by the amount collected in premiums to 77.5% in 2011 from 67.8% in the same six month period last year.

Could this be down to our bad weather last winter I wonder?

Needless to say I don’t know if this ratio is calculated before pre-tax profits are declared or after but I certainly wouldn’t describe Admiral as a ‘poor insurer’ which ever way the story gets told. But it’s likely that other insurers might be considerably less profitable because they aren’t as well run or as ambitious or they don’t have their own comparison website.

In which case I don’t think we motorists should be expected to shore up mediocre insurance providers with increased premiums. Let’s hope that the profitable businesses can afford to offer us more competitive premiums as a result; that’s what competition should be all about and if some can’t make the grade then it’s highly likely we won’t need them in future.

By all means explain the mechanics of all this to me if I have this wrong in my mind because the insurance industry is not as squeaky clean as it might be in my experience, especially when it comes to accident claims, high excesses and associated referral services.

Fortunately profitable insurance providers like Admiral can afford to lead the field through best practice and I hope they do just that. My particular interest is in seeing low motor insurance premiums for young female motorists in recognition of our (usually) safer driving record.

So I particularly object to the EU telling us what to do in our country as in ‘you must charge women and men the same insurance premiums’ masquerading as gender equality but which flies in the face of underwriting logic based on risk and experience.

Whatever makes the EU think they know what’s best for us; better than we know for ourselves?

FOXY Steph

Fraud and insurance scams costs the UK £30.5 billion a year and dishonest insurance claims alone cost nigh on £2 billion a year which adds an extra £44 per year to every female household’s general insurance budget.

As if the cost of car insurance isn’t high enough already for women drivers.

The largest fraud case the motor insurance industry has ever seen was in April 2011 when 39 members of a Luton gang were involved in a £5.3 million ‘cash for crash’ insurance scam. Called Operation Exhort this involved a five year investigation by Bedfordshire Police and three defendants were jailed. I hope for a long time. And a further 33 defendants pleaded guilty to a variety of related offences.

But it isn’t always big fraud like this that gets centre stage billing and it can involve women drivers taking a leading role. Take the story of two female friends who staged a car crash to cheat an insurance company out of £11,400 last July.

Katie Ashcroft, aged 24, and Jodie Jackman aged 23 colluded to fake an accident and arranged for a ‘Mr Fixit’ to crash their cars into each other before ringing their insurance companies to make a fraudulent claim. Friends and family members then pretended to be passengers in the cars and filed fake injury claims. The scam was only exposed when emails between the pair were found.

How fortunate that emails like this can be found in suspicious circumstances…

If you know of an insurance scam please report this via the Insurance Fraud Bureau. They offer a free and confidential Chatline at their website.

FOXY feels VERY strongly about this because it’s time that honest motorists stood up for themselves and outed the flagrant dishonesty of others who expect us to pay for their fraudulent gain.

FOXY Steph

Now that the EU is dictating common-rated gender car insurance premiums in future, fewer young women drivers will be able to afford to learn to drive and those that can will surely face the full force of motor insurance scams which are more likely to be caused by and involve men.

According to Confused.com the average fully comprehensive car insurance premium rose by 38% in 2010 and now stands at £695. These rates are influenced by the fact that 15% of young drivers currently cause 31% of all accidents leading to 40% of all motor insurance claims. As things stand, the average premium for a 17-20 year old male is currently a staggering £2,976 and for women £1,694. Come December 2012 women will pay considerably more than they do now and men slightly less we think – either way this is more than most young drivers will pay for their first car.

Which is why I see this as the equivalent of a new and unfair ‘tax’ on young females in particular from working and middle class families, facing higher University fees on the horizon and who probably can’t afford to drive in future now that the cost of insurance will rise so much. The truth is that  children from more wealthy families stand a much better chance of their parents paying for their car, their insurance and their education. Which seems unfair to me.

No wonder insurers are worried if fewer (of the safer) motorists can afford their products in future.

The reason car insurance premiums have risen so much for men and women drivers alike is to pay for accidents caused by uninsured drivers, for staged ‘cash for crash’ accidents and the ever increasing practice of submitting fraudulent claims. All of these have a self fulfilling and cyclical feel to them in that the higher the premiums, the more appealing it is to drive uninsured or to prepare a fraudulent claim; therefore the higher the premiums need to be to pay for them and so on…

Confused.com wants better data sharing between the DVLA and insurers to help reduce instances of fraud. Quite right. They also want the test to be harder but we see this as a crude method to clobber young women again when we aren’t the real risk on the roads. It’s the young men who cause the majority of serious accidents remember, being much more confident drivers more likely to put their foot down, and who tend to pass the test after fewer lessons than more cautious women. Which is perhaps why we are the safer drivers I feel.

So any attempt to make the driving test tougher for us is likely to hit young women harder than young men; and cost us even more to pass than it does already.

This is all such a mess.

In an attempt to be seen as politically correct when dealing with Mars and Venus matters we are clobbering less confident and more cautious young women drivers when we should be tackling the more accident-prone male mindset here. We should rate men as the known risk they are, invest some of their premium in gender marketing & education and reward the god male drivers. Is that so very difficult to do? And similarly with women…

Just don’t rate women the same as men when we aren’t.

Making the driving test harder, re-assessing the Pass Plus scheme, getting insurers to offer discounts for those who have had additional training and increasing the use of telematics devices (which Aviva pioneered and discontinued for cost reasons…) should all be reviewed of course.

But the penalty for being caught driving uninsured is ludicrously low – a maximum £1,000 with an actual average fine of £200. When they have saved so much money on not being insured? Who thought that formula up I wonder?

We should all be expected to wear our insurance on our windscreens like tax and any car with out of date or non existent evidence of insurance (this applies to SORN’d cars too I believe) should be reported by passing motorists. The penalties need to be a lot more realistic and punitive. If it was down to me I’d confiscate cars and licenses and make those that offend pay the costs of doing this.

Something needs to be done to stop women becoming the soft target for even more unfair increases in their insurance.

FOXY Steph

If you feel this is unfair, please join FOXY Lady Drivers Club and add your voice to ours – women drivers need to be heard not forgotten after the EU ruling.

Women drivers need a voice in Europe NOW

As the EU considers charging young women up to 25% more (some say 40% more) for their car insurance who is speaking out for the best interests of UK female motorists?

In my business I am allowed to price my product relative to demand, operating costs and the competition. Which is why most young women drivers get lower car insurance premiums than most young men, because they are the cheaper/safer sex for insurers to underwrite.

However, following a Belgian complaint about this practice, the Advocate General at the European Court of Justice, Juliane Kokott, believes that charging men and women different rates because of their sex violates anti-discrimination laws in a short-sighted gesture that is paying lip service to political correctness within the EU. So we should all be paying the same.

Mrs Kokott, a German mother of six for the record, has asked the Court to rule on the validity of an exemption clause to the Equal Treatment Directive and, if approved within the next month, this will quickly become EU law. All women in the UK may well end up paying more for car insurance cover, thus subsidising the expensive accidents that are mainly caused by young men.

Far from violating anti-discrimination laws, this is surely a case of positive discrimination against female drivers.

This reminds me of a heartfelt comment made by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:

‘There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.’

Few females seem such worthy candidates of this scorn as Mrs Kokott, regardless of the Court’s eventual judgement.

FOXY Steph

If you feel strongly about this and can add ideas, weight and communications reach to a FOXY campaign, please email steph@foxyladydrivers.com

The cost of car insurance has rocketed alongside fuel in 2010. And to add salt to our motoring wounds, there’s talk of gender-based pricing raising car insurance premiums further for women if the way UK underwriters work today is outlawed by the EU in future.

According to price comparison site Confused.com, the cost of premiums rose by 38.2% in 2010 with the average premium now £695 – meaning drivers are now paying nearly £200 more than they were at the beginning of 2010.

And ringing loud bells with me (with a 17 year old son about to start driving lessons) I see that the biggest rises came in the 51-55 age group, with parents adding children to their policies as named drivers accounting for the bulk of that increase. No surprises really when you realise that annual car insurance is likely to cost more than their first car did. Parents will look to reduce the insurance costs for their cash-poor offspring (and themselves of course…) for obvious reasons.
In fact many well-meaning parents have resorted to “fronting” to escape the spiralling costs of insurance for younger drivers, not realising that this is fraud, could invalidate their insurance cover and lead to a criminal conviction. But clearly this is a BIG temptation for those trying to get cheaper car insurance; they insure a vehicle in their name as the main driver, with their son or daughter listed as an occasional driver but the son/daughter are the main users and therefore more likely to have an accident. More than half the [parent] motorists questioned by the ABI in January said they would not rule out doing this.

And once more the European courts are expected to rule shortly on whether gender can be used for underwriting insurance policies in future. If they ban the use of gender based prices and the facts that relate to each, car insurance prices will rise for young women drivers in particular with a predicted 25% increase in premium for women drivers under 25 years. They will be paying for their young male counterparts serious and fatal accident record.

Similarly life insurance cover would likely rise for women (to fund claims made by men who are more likely to die younger) whereas health insurance costs may fall for us.

The future for annuities is uncertain – as always it’s best to take independent advice re car finance for women from a qualified professional.

FOXY Steph

Women drivers who want to save money running their car and have insurance and finance feedback, advice and information from within the Club should join FOXY Lady Drivers Club. Just £23 for a lifetime subscription.

The jury is out as always about the comparative driving ability of women and men drivers. This always depends on a lot more factors than just age (such as postcode, experience and claims) but provocative gender headlines are always popular!

Most of us are aware of the statistics about young men drivers causing more than 90% of all fatalities and serious injuries on the road. Hence the lesser risk assessment for car insurance premiums for younger female motorists.

Previous research suggested that men and women between the age of 30 and 60 were similarly competent drivers, judged by their driving record and insurance claims.

After that, older women had more accidents but they were often local bumps that were less serious and less expensive to repair. I had assumed that they were normally paid for by the motorist within their excess and I have always advocated the likes of the Driving Standards Agency’s Arrive Alive training programme (called Classic for older drivers) for organisations like the WI and TWG to include in their local membership events programmes.

But I read in Guardian Money that insurers are now charging women drivers aged 75 some 50% more for their car insurance than men. From the age of 80 this rises to a staggering supplement of 100%. Ouch.

Unsurprisingly, linked to predictable baby boomer birth rates and social trends the number of women drivers over 70 with licences has increased dramatically from 4% in 1976 to the 1990s figure of 20% and it is now at 36%. This will continue to grow as those of us with driving licences age and replace Mums and Grans who perhaps didn’t drive in their day.

The crossover point at which women start paying more than men has, according to AA Insurance, reduced from 60 years to 50 years in just six years. As other car insurance providers are still working on 60 years as the crossover point it makes sound sense for any 51 to 59 year old foxy women drivers to shop around for rates come renewal time, especially those who might be paying more than they need to AA Insurance…

In Guardian Money’s analysis Asda and Sheilas’ Wheels came out best and surprisingly, bearing in mind their retail market profile one of the biggest increases in premiums was made by Marks & Spencer followed by the RAC (53% more), Tesco (37% more) and LV= (28% more).

I know from experience that many older women drivers lack confidence for a multitude of reasons (divorce and widowhood might have forced them onto the roads after many years of willing back seat driving), can be more likely to get distracted than men (we call it multi-tasking and we often have children with us), are more likely to be doing local shopping mileage (so we WILL be the ones to have these local prangs) and may not have had training in motorway driving which requires a different skill set.

But is it just ‘older’ women that should have driving refresher courses? Even celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow  admit to needing help with their driving concentration skills… And after 10 years, wouldn’t it be a good idea for everyone to have a refresher driving training course to fend off all the bad driving habits we all seem to acquire?

I am all in favour of driving training courses for women drivers of all ages that bring women together locally, are social female friendly occasions rather than what might be perceived as patronising experiences and so that women can learn from their peers rather than superior males…

And perhaps the insurance companies would then reward an independent training scheme with lower premiums for women drivers, where applicable, just as they do with the PassPlus training scheme for novice drivers. After all their risk should be lower with fewer road accidents and motoring claims.

We might even include FOXY’s life assistance membership services including free car fitness checks and FOXY Choice’s female friendly approved garages so she can count on friendly motoring support and good local garages to help her run safer cars and who are measurably better than others.

FOXY Steph