Tag Archives: equality

Thanks for your support…

As a result of our lobbying partnership with the ProMOTe organisation, HM Government has agreed that the UK MOT model is the safer choice than the EU alternative for UK motorists.

That’s a result worthy of celebration for all UK women drivers. It’s all too easy to do nothing, thinking someone else will do the right thing.

In FOXY’s experience this isn’t always the case, as in the EU ruling that is set to charge women the same insurance premiums as men come December 2012, in the name of equality. Can you recall anyone standing up for female motorists despite the fact that insurance has always been about underwriting risk and women drivers are known to be the statistically safer and lower risk gender on UK roads?

No protest from MPs or from the RAC or AA… And needless to say, we won’t hear this from insurance companies because they will be richer as a result of this ruling.

Well now FOXY will be speaking out about this unfair ruling that will mean women paying for accidents traditionally caused by young men and bolstering insurer profits. This is the next campaign we will be lobbying for on behalf of women drivers. Please add to our female motoring voice by joining FOXY Lady Drivers Club and we’ll keep you posted about car insurance buying advice and where the best deals for women are to be found.

FOXY

UK insurers discriminate against young women drivers

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 info@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

Admirable Admiral insurance results

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