Men pay 27% more for car insurance than women as gender gap widens
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Version 0 of 1. The gap between the cost of car insurance for men and women has widened since an EU directive banning the use of gender as a factor for pricing policies, new research has found. The average annual policy taken out by a man between June and August cost £821, compared to £649 for a woman, comparethemarket.com found. The 27 per cent gap suggests that implementation of the EU’s gender directive in December 2012 has not been effective in ending price differences. In January 2013, the average policy for a male driver cost £591.70 compared to £493.88 for women – a difference of under 20 per cent. The research also found that the gap between the cheapest premium and the average premium was wider for men than for women – suggesting that men stand to save more by shopping around. Between June and August 2017, the difference between the cheapest and average policy for women was £101.21, while the difference between the cheapest and the average policy for men was £151.67. Insurance costs for all motorists have risen in the past year with the average premium hitting £740 in the third quarter - a rise of £42 or 6 per cent on the same period last year. Insurers have blamed the price hikes on recent Government changes including increases in the Insurance Premium Tax and also the personal accident discount rate John Miles, head of motor insurance at comparethemarket.com, said the EU’s gender directive had had little effect on changing premium prices He added: “This is likely due to a number of factors, such as statistically higher accident rates for men and more men than woman driving business and commercial vehicles – which are higher risk. “The directive removed the ability of providers to give default discounts to women; however, the statistics and risk models used by insurers mean that the result is largely the same.” |