A new law that was sneaked in on 21 December last under cover of Christmas means that many young women will soon be feeling the pinch when their car insurance renewal notice hits the doormat.
Thanks to the EU and an evident absence of anyone sticking up for women drivers when this was first mooted more than 10 years ago (long before FOXY was conceived…) the Gender Directive is now law in the UK. This prevents insurers from using statistical evidence to calculate premiums, proof that most young women are safer drivers than many young men, for example.
Of course there’s an inherent unfairness here as young men can be safe drivers and young women dangerous ones but the way I see it, if I was setting up an insurance business (and this would apply to any financially switched on business man I’m sure) I’d base my premiums on known risk factors for starters then apply good driving rewards and bad driving penalties on an individual basis thereafter.
Which is what black box telematics are all about of course. They are fitted in your car to assess your driving style and, hopefully, will incentivise young drivers to drive responsibly on the basis of a financial reward. Let’s hope the young men that need them most buy them…
But whether the eventual financial reward will ever reinstate the advantageous premiums that young women have paid in the past remains to be seen.
Are insurers consistent in their approach to gender?
It’s not going to be easy to monitor whether insurers are being consistent here or treating men and women the same because there are so many other risk factors that they are allowed to take into consideration when calculating premiums. These include a driver’s age, occupation, postcode, anti-theft devices, age/value/model of car, engine size, annual mileage, multiple car ownership, named drivers, previous claims, the policy excess, modifications and probably other factors I’ve forgotten today.
But we’ll be keeping our eyes open here…
What’s new after the Gender Directive?
In a nutshell, we have to rely on insurers doing the right thing for women from now on. Good insurers will want to demonstrate added value for money to their female customers, knowing that young drivers in particular may be facing dramatically higher premiums.
There is a clear move towards black box technology to not only reduce the number of road accidents young drivers are involved in but also to keep their premiums down. This could be a good thing and fortunately it’s a very competitive area which will keep prices down. You’ll find out more about this and the key players at the comparethebox website to which should be added a new entrant called ‘Drive Like A Girl‘ ; a name that’s unlikely to attract any male interest I’d have thought!
We are also noticing a lot of short term tactical advertising targeting women drivers. Women are more attracted by loyalty card points than men, freebies and designer handbags for that matter, so we’re not surprised to see these on offer at price comparison websites, Facebook, from supermarket and female-oriented insurance brands. Far be it for me to suggest a handbag competition approach might be seen as patronising by some women but I have heard this word mentioned recently.
The best approach, we believe, is to see the Gender Directive as an opportunity to build a long term relationship with women as a result of doing something that is demonstrably in their long term best interests. An example of a customer service initiative that illustrates this well is that of Ageas Insurance who asked us to develop a FOXY Lady Approved© female friendly standard for their accident repair centres, much as we had done for garages previously. This has since been organised by our FOXY Choice website and approximately 100 Ageas Solution Centres are now members of the new network. Together we are spreading the news that women have a choice of female friendly repairers at accident time and a start has been made here.
This is also a commitment to higher services levels for men because bodyshops and garages that get service levels right for fussy women (like me) are automatically doing a better job for men too.
Finally if you’d like to leave feedback about ANY garage, accident repair centre or recent insurance experience after the Gender Directive we’d love to hear from you HERE.
We need you to tell us so we can share instances of best (and worst) practice with other women drivers.
FOXY