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Posts Tagged ‘lower insurance premiums for ladies’

Staying with the theme of rights, do women have the right to lower insurance premiums by sole virtue of their gender?

Pity the man who drives with care and caution, because his insurance company will load his premium anyway.

That’s because claim statistics reveal that men, especially young men, are more likely to be involved in an accident, and the repair bill is likely to be higher than that arising from a car accident claim submitted by a woman driver.

As was recently reported, the European Court of Justice has ruled that from December 2012, insurers in the UK can’t practise gender discrimination by charging men higher premiums than women. While that ruling is not binding on South African insurance companies, it has caused major ripples because our industry tends to follow trends in the UK and Europe.

1st for Women is determined to stick to its business model, and the statistics which underpin it.

“1st for Women stands by the fact that, statistically, women are lower insurance risks than their male counterparts,” said managing director Robyn Farrell.

“They take fewer risks, make more careful decisions, usually stick to the speed limit and frown upon road rage.

“The insurance industry as a whole differentiates but does not discriminate.

“Discrimination implies an arbitrary distinction that is not based on merit whilst differentiation is a distinction based on merit.

“The entire insurance industry differentiates in terms of age, gender, geographical location, years of insurance and licence period.”

Not surprisingly, the SA Insurance Association (Saia) has also come out in support of “differentiation in insurance premiums to benefit low-risk consumers”.

Saia’s legal manager, Suzette Strydom, said insurance premiums were based on risk – the higher the risk, the higher the premium.

The constitution outlawed “unfair” discrimination, but discrimination which “reasonably and justifiably differentiates between persons according to objectively determinable criteria, intrinsic to the activity concerned” was defensible, she said.

In other words, there’s solid evidence that women are generally lower risk when it comes to car claims than men.

“In the South African insurance industry, the interpretation has always been that in the event that an insurer can show, with statistics, over a particular period of time, that the claim ratios confirm an increase in and an exposure to risk as a result of age, gender, location or other factors, the premiums will be determined accordingly,” Strydom said.

Age also played a major role in determining car insurance premiums.

“Drivers between the ages of 18 and 25 are three times more likely to cause an accident,” she said. “It is unfair to expect pensioners, for example, to subsidise younger drivers.”

The other factor which influences your car insurance premium is your claim profile – lodge a claim and your premium may well increase afterwards, in keeping with your increased risk status.

So it stands to reason that if you haven’t claimed on your policy for some time, your risk diminishes and your premium should too.

But this doesn’t happen automatically – you have to ask.

In January I got the usual letter from my insurer, telling me that my monthly premium was about go up because of increases in the cost of labour repair rates, vehicle parts and the like.

I was told that my monthly premium, which includes household insurance, was going to increase by a whopping R564 a month.

So I made a call to my insurance company, pointing out a few facts: that while car parts and labour have gone up in most cases, the value of the two cars in question had significantly decreased; that we do relatively low mileage, and that we hadn’t made a car claim for many years.

Within minutes, I was offered a new deal.

Instead of going up by R564 a month, my existing premium went down by R244 a month, so that call saved me more than R800 a month.

Car Insurance Comparisons
If you’re in a similar position, make that call. –

By Wendy Knowler, Pretoria News

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