i believe data does exist basedn on the amount of claims one individual insurer has.

I doubt however insurers can say without proof that acrosss the board,mens claims are more expensive.

Even if it was proven it is still discrimination against gender...a driver is a driver gender should have nothing to do with it.

I was intrigued by the responses here - as many know I sometimes try to have a little fun whilst posting but sometimes it misfires. My point - although a 20,000 foot viewpoint - was that if you take sex into account you are forced into taking other discriminatory factors into account as well. You cannot say "All Men" just as you cannot say "All White Men" - the argument simply falls down. You either discriminate or you don't and there is no way anyone in the insurance industry can tell me that they don't discriminate.

If you take this further, they already discriminate by age as well - if you are young, you are a risk, if you are old you are a risk, but if you are a young male, you are more of a risk than a young female. Now WHERE are these facts recorded for all to see? Actually - nowhere and each insurer uses different criteria for risk assessment which means that there is no commonality to the equations.

So to answer the posting question, the answer - logically and legally - must be "yes" although there will always be those who will try to justify this in their own quaint and somewhat rude ways. Discrimination is discrimination - don't try to dress it up as 'risk factors' and 'socio-economic variables'. If you discriminate/load on sex, then you MUST justify that with public and consistently verifiable data - now where is that data please?

SHARK! 

Sounds about right conman killer..spot on.

If they do go as far gender and age then maybe race should come into it...but i cant see it happening,

id imagine there is statistical differences in claims from different races and colours,but again its to controversial to even think about charging a white or black person more than the other.

My point exactly --- Proving that what they are doing is not srtictly legal in that they get away with what they are allowed to, dependant on the adverse bad publicity they could receive. !!!

That means the premiums we all get quoted, are not worked out based on a true risk basis.

Double standards, hypocrisy and abuse.... spring to mind. !!!

I suppose it would be more controversial if race and colours were a ratable factor.

Now that would be another form of discrimination,insurance companies get away with a lot but if they ever tried to rate on race there would be uproar on a extreme scale,they shouldnt use gender in the rating factors,i can understand age as older age generally means the driver is more experianced if not more mature and wiser when first starting to drive,but to use reasons like gender is going beyond the limits insurance companies should be able to rate on.

id imagine there is statistical differences in claims from different races and colours,but again its to controversial to even think about charging a white or black person more than the other.

Do they record and produce stats on claims from different races and colours, if not why not ?

There has got to be a significant difference in claims from different races & coloured people, so why dare they not use the same reasons and the excuse of statistics, to overcome the race equality laws in the same way as they do with gender when working out premiums ?

You,me and thousands of other male drivers think the exact same thing.

Whether stats prove men are higher loss ratio or not,its still a gender issue,gender should not be taken into account,at the end of the day a driver is a driver ,it should be based on driving ability and other factors such as area risk etc.

As requested Red Army.

http://www.pinsentmasons.com/media/1388061222.pdf

I've viewed/analysed claim stats for many insurers and now many broker footprints and they do display that Men have a higher loss ratio to Women.

This is the bottom line unfortunately whether Male's drive more than Female's or not.  Gender is a material fact.  I wish it wasn’t the case because my policy may be a bit cheaper. 

just wanna thank everyone for their views so far...turned into quite a debate.

noodles:

vinnyb:Another thing that has to be taken into account is that men do drive a lot more than women. Most comparisons of insurance prices do not take this into account.

Insurers do take this into account. That is why they ask you your annual mileage when providing a quote.

 Sorry I meant that all the people who do the analysis to say that men pay more for insurance premiums do not take into account the actual milage driven, not the insurance companies.

I think if some analysis was done on cost of insurance per mile for both men and women the gap would be significantly less.

However as men do have more high speed collisions than women I would expect the cost still be higher for men(however this is probably dropping with the new generation of young women drivers).

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics!

i see noodles is back on again attacking people for having an opinion.

whether they are wrong or not is irrelavant,the amount of personal attacks ive seen on here is totally uncalled for and im not just blaming one person ,even i get annoyed at some people and maybe go to far sometimes.

Noodles however takes it to a whole different level going into really laying into some people,calling their posts ill-informed. dogma and tabloid rhetoric..admittedly he usually saves the worst personal insults for me for some reason(check other past subjects like do men get penalised for being men by insurers).

the fact is every one is entitled to their view whether right or wrong,it doesnt matter if they dont know what they are talking about as the whole point of a forum is for people to have a view and for them to be corrected in a dignified way,not by people constantly shooting other people down.

I change my insurance a lot as I always buy and sell my cars of a variety of groups.
So out of 15 insurers only one checked and caught me. As said in another sentence Red Army
 I was only found to be holding back when trying to insure a Group 20 Imported car.

This is meaty stuff and you hate it because it's true and it is do-able.

tother:

You are really unneccessarily aggressive and
it's absolutely laughable that you can talk about discrimination and
then make comments like that last one in brackets.

All I am
getting at is that both men and women are discriminated against in all
kinds of ways but at least one contributing factor, with regards to
insurance, is that generally men have more expensive claims. Insurance
companies have to assess risk somehow, do you honestly believe that the
industry can just make up the stats they use? They are businesses and
are regulated. There are numerous studies and collations of data in
evidence if you care to research the subject; in the meantime you would
do well to not be so offensive, it's honestly uncalled for.

At last, a post from someone who knows what they are talking about!

vinnyb:Another thing that has to be taken into account
is that men do drive a lot more than women. Most comparisons of
insurance prices do not take this into account.

Insurers do take this into account. That is why they ask you your annual mileage when providing a quote.