men_vs_women_insurance

In 2012 a new European directive was introduced to stop gender discrimination that prevented insurance underwriters to use gender as a factor when calculating risk profiles of drivers. Since doing so it was expected that men and women’s insurance premiums would be more or less equal. And the gap did significantly narrow soon after the introduction (which indicates that before the directive, gender was indeed being used as a risk factor when calculating premiums) however from the latest reports, going back and comparing premiums over the past 2 years it seems that men are actually paying even more than before the directive was introduced and are now paying on average 20% more than women.

How are insurance companies getting away with this?

Well as it turns out insurance companies have not been using gender as a risk factor but in fact the statistics show men are actually more likely to have a driving conviction on their licence than women, over 4 times as likely to be precise. Looking at the data of specific convictions, Men are over 3.5 times more likely to be caught driving without insurance and 5 times as likely as women to be caught drink driving. Surprisingly, 0% of women drivers have been charged with careless driving while 2% of male drivers had been.  Men have also been involved in making more claims than women on average which increases their risk profile too.

In addition to this the average insurance claim value for men is higher than for women, which could be down to the fact men tend to drive bigger and more expensive cars so will cost more to repair.
Interestingly men are found to pass their driving tests a lot sooner than women however it looks like the extra lessons that women need to pass their tests is paying off in the long term as they are clearly the safer sex when it comes to driving.

How can I get the best insurance deals?

No matter what gender drivers are insurance is a necessity to stay on the roads legally, so in order to get the best deal and save as much money as possible we always advise people to use an insurance comparison website that can get quotes from many brokers. It is worth noting too that comparison sites don’t have all available brokers listed so it is always good to use a few comparison websites to get the best insurance deal possible.