Tag Archives: EU Gender Directive

No need for young women drivers to despair about car insurance

Call me suspicious but when there’s bad news to be announced it’s usually leaked out under cover of a bigger story.

And what could be a bigger story than Christmas?

The bad news is that the UK Gender Directive arrived on 21 December and it will undoubtedly price many young women drivers off the road as a result.

Some call it D-Day – the D standing for despair presumably, as felt by many young females when they receive their renewal insurance notifications from now on.

I’m not talking so much about rich families because, in most cases, their parents will simply cough up. I’m talking about those that aren’t well off but who scrimped and saved to fund their own driving lessons, test and first car. And all of them young women who are statistically less likely to speed or take risks than their male counterparts…

Was it so unreasonable for them to expect their insurance premiums to reduce not double and more as looks to be the case in future?

The irony is that this gender discrimination has been inflicted on us by the European Court of Justice [sic] and a German Mum of six. Shame on you Juliane Kokott – when we needed you to stick up for your gender you put your career first. Who needs enemies when we can’t even rely on our own sex for support.

The future for car insurance for women

By the New Year we’ll have the new FOXY Lady Insurance website to help. Not just about car insurance it’ll also identify the best deals out there, seen through female eyes. What makes FOXY different is that we’re the UK’s only dedicated female brand for motorists and we’re totally independent. We’ll also be inviting female feedback about insurance services and insurers so we can share this to benefit others. And finally we’ll be promoting insurance agents and brokers who share our wish to provide female friendly insurance services to women in future. At times of change and potential unfairness it’s reassuring to rely on personal service from someone who uderstands.

Because, contrary to Juliane’s principles, equality doesn’t always mean that both genders are the same or that we want to be treated the same when it comes to customer service. So FOXY’ll tackle this service gap so women can rely on us to represent their best interests.

This will be my final blog to vent about this subject. It is clearly EU madness, FOXY was too late to the party to make a difference (this has been in the pipeline for over a decade whereas FOXY arrived in 2005) and it’s now time to move on. Amen.

The FOXY way forward

If, having read this far, you share my indignation, there are three things you could do to help young women, with a view to the future.

1 Please LIKE our FOXY Lady Insurance Page at Facebook.

2 Tell any young female motorists to contact FOXY Lady Insurance if their renewal quote rises unfairly. We’ll try to beat it by introducing them to a FOXY Lady Approved insurance adviser who’ll listen, understand and be well informed about their situation.

3 Bookmark our new website and return to it in the New Year (and tell others to do the same).

Thank you for listening…

FOXY

Look at the accident facts re female drivers

There are times when statistics leave me speechless. Especially when they confirm what we all know. That women are safer drivers compared to men. Full stop. So why charge women U40 more for car insurance simply because the EU says so?

This is why I’m publishing this excellent infographic from Tesco Bank with a few FOXY footnotes below…

Driving Test Performance Statistics

I suspect that some men might see these driving test statistics as evidence of their superior driving ability at an early age. And that some females might agree because many of us aren’t as confident…

But think about it. If young male drivers are so much more likely than young females to cause serious and fatal accidents perhaps they’d be safer drivers if they had to take the same amount of time and lessons as us? And perhaps it’s that extra driving experience coupled with the absence of testosterone-driven driver behaviour that makes us the more conservative and safer drivers. Exceptions apply and so on.

Accident Statistics

Please look at the graph re accident statistics which are self explanatory I feel. Can there be any doubt that women are the less accident prone/lesser risk gender throughout our lives?

So how can the EU Gender Directive simply sweep this actuarial evidence to one side?

If you know better, please explain to me why women are to pay the same as men for car insurance? The only possible explanation is that this is an opportunity for insurers to up their profits.

I’d like to be proved wrong. I certainly expect the genuinely female friendly insurers WILL prove me wrong – and that a gap will start to emerge after G-Day between the insurers that are getting it right for females versus less ethical others that see it as a straight forward opportunity to earn more profit.

If you’d like to be kept informed about this subject please LIKE our new Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/foxyladyinsurance.

Find out more information about Car Insurance from Tesco Bank.

Real life research confirms women safer drivers

New analysis from telematics provider Wunelli has found, categorically apparently, that women are better drivers than men. But isn’t this what we’ve always known?

Based on the actual driving performance of 19 thousand drivers, over 40 million journeys and 154 million miles of travel their analysis found that:
+ Women drivers are 20% safer than men
+ Women drive 28% less at night than men
+ Women exceed the speed limit 12% less than men
+ Women brake hard 11% less than men
 
Sandy Dunn, Chairman of Wunelli said:

“Motor insurance rates to date have been based on estimations, trends and averages gathered and analysed over many years. 

“When the EU Gender Directive comes into play, insurers will need to rely more heavily on the postcode of the driver and the car type being driven to determine the premium.”

“For some women this won’t be a bad thing, but others could see their premiums rocketing.” 
 
“Telematics based insurance products mean motorists can be insured based on how they actually drive instead of being based on average behaviour.” 

“Up to now, because premiums for women drivers have been relatively low compared to those for men, the take up of telematics based products amongst female drivers has been slow, comprising around 30% of all telematics policies.” 

“We believe this will change as some women, typically those that are younger and driving more powerful vehicles, start to see more of a stark price difference between a conventional motor policy and a telematics based policy when they shop around come renewal time.”
 
“The really interesting point about telematics is that once you start analysing the data in an aggregated form, we get a very clear picture of how the UK’s roads are being used, from the roads where people speed the most to the car models least likely to have an accident.” 

“This information is already being used by selected insurers to enrich existing policyholder data to provide more accurate pricing of insurance policies. And of course, the more people take up telematics policies, the more conscious they will be of their driving behaviour and the safer our roads will become.”

FOXY comment

All this is fine and needless to say we’ll be ecstatic if the accident prone gender group (young males U25) buy telematics solutions which then influence their driving behaviour and save lives as a result.

Let’s see if this group buys black box insurance policies to monitor their driving behaviour.

But how can it be fair to expect women to pay extra for black box telematic devices to prove what insurers have always known – that women are the lesser insurance risk?

Not only does the installation of a black box alone add between £80 to £100 to install (I don’t know how much the additional annual contract is to analyse these) but according to the Co-operative Insurance website their black box insurance solution is unlikely to reflect in more than a 20% change in rates, either way, and it takes 90 days of driving before any adjustment is made.

So, young women in particular are expected to pay for an unnecessary black box to be fitted and their driving analysed, and it takes 3 months of paying 25% more perhaps, to earn a discount of 20% perhaps, to prove they are the safe drivers everyone knew we were to begin with?

Does that make sense to you?

Put simply, young women are to pay more so that young male drivers (the real accident risk gender group) pay less and whilst insurers and telematics solution providers get richer in the process.

All driven by the EU of course but not contested by our UK Government as far as I can see…

Where’s the gender fairness in all that for young female motorists?

FOXY

PS Very soon we’ll be launching FOXY Lady Insurance a website to compare insurer reaction to the EU Gender Directive from a female point of view. In the meantime, please LIKE our Facebook page and we’ll keep you posted with the latest news, female feedback and deals to be had to keep our insurance premiums down, fairly, wherever possible.