There’s no doubt that 2012 is a momentous year. And that’s not even just because of the Olympics or even the Queen’s diamond jubilee. There’s something else about to happen that will mean 2012 will go down in history - as the year the battle of the sexes ended.
Or perhaps just the year the cost of insuring a car sky-rocketed for women.
From 21 December the likes of Sheila and her mates will no longer be allowed to give safer women drivers preferential rates on their car insurance.
Even though statistically women have fewer accidents and therefore make fewer car insurance claims, the European Court, in its wisdom, has decided this shouldn’t make it OK for women to pay less than their ‘higher-risk’ male counterparts.
OK, so say you’re called ‘Colin’, a middle-aged male driver who always sticks to the speed limit, has never made a claim and never been involved in an accident. It must be a little galling to get lumped in with all the boy racers.
And it must rankle a bit when you estimate you’re probably paying more than ‘girl racer’ Shaz down the road, who whizzes up and down at all hours in her souped-up Fiesta ferrying a million-and-one mates with her.
But that’s all about to change as women under the age of 25 are likely to be hit by the highest increases of all.
According to figures from the AA, women aged between 17 and 22 pay an average of £1,799 a year for car insurance, while men in this age group pay a staggering £3,163.
In order to end any gender discrimination, women in this age bracket are going to have to see a huge hike in their premiums, if they’re to pay the same as male drivers of the same age.
As for everyone else, well, the EU ruling basically means that women will generally pay more for car insurance, while men will probably find they pay less than they currently do.
The Association of British Insurers estimates that women will see their premiums rise by about 20%, while men will see their premiums drop by about 10%.
There will no doubt be plenty of debate about whether it’s fair or not, and whether an EU ruling to stop discrimination is actually going to cause discrimination, but that’s not going to worry the insurance companies.
It’s slogan may be ‘a girl’s best friend’, but Diamond would be your best friend too if you saw how much it has been raking in. In March, Admiral Group, which owns Diamond, posted a 13% rise in profits to £299 million for the year to December 2011. And you can bet that the first-half of this year will have proved equally profitable when interim results are announced at the end of August.
And you can also bet that fellow insurer eSure, which owns Sheilas’ Wheels and saw no less than a four-fold rise in operating profits last year, will also have something for its pink sequin-clad promo girls to smile about in 2012 too.
It’s been a win-win situation for them and it will continue to be so.
While they’ve been offering women drivers nice low premiums, customers have flocked to them en masse, boosting their profits nicely. But at the same time they’ve also continued to insure male drivers – albeit at much higher premiums. These higher risk drivers may have meant payouts have been more frequent, but for all those truly high risk male drivers, in fact the majority are probably more like our Colin we mentioned earlier, and about as risk-free as you can get.
The truth is, the insurance companies have been – and always will be – laughing all the way to the bank. As for the battle of the sexes, it’s probably still got quite some way to go yet.
{Image: Christian Senger}
