Ricky Wilson/Stuff
Car insurance premiums have been rising fast thanks to inflation and rising crime.
Insurer Vero has gone gender-neutral with its car insurance, and will no longer underwrite policies based on drivers’ gender.
It has sent a note to insurance brokers saying it will no longer capture a driver’s gender for car insurance policies.
“Gender is currently captured in a binary sense and doesn’t accurately reflect our customer base,” Vero told brokers.
“This means it’s no longer appropriate to rate against or to ask for this information from our customers.”
In 2021, Vero said it was intending to make the move, but said it would not be moving quickly because it needed to “smooth” in the changes to avoid big swings in premiums for some people.
“As a business, we had the option to try and rate or price a more diverse gender spectrum,” Sacha Cowlrick, executive manager business at Vero, said in the update to brokers on Tuesday.
But, Cowlrick said the company decided it was simpler and more inclusive to remove gender from its underwriting.
Many countries have laws requiring drivers to be insured. New Zealand does not, despite policymakers having looked closely at doing so several times.
Brokers applying for car insurance from Vero would now no longer have to fill in questions related to driver gender.
In October 2021, Stuff reported Cowlrick saying there had traditionally been strong evidence that gender could determine the likelihood of a customer making a claim, and was a legitimate part of building up a person’s risk profile.
It has been reported that younger women in particular are less likely to crash than young men.
Other factors taken into account by insurers when calculating car insurance premiums are the age of the driver, where they live, their driving history, and the type of car they are insuring, according to AA Insurance, which is majority-owned by Vero.
AA Insurance has been approached to ask whether it is also going gender-neutral for car insurance
However, in 2021, Cowlrick said at the time that the male versus female binary distinction of gender was not a reflection of modern New Zealand, nor a true reflection of the gender spectrum of Vero’s customers.
Cowlrick said the process was complex and would take at least 12 to 18 months.
Some brokers were privately concerned the move meant younger women drivers paying higher premiums to “cross-subsidise” younger male drivers.
Vero has been approached for comment, and is expected to make a public announcement on the change later on Tuesday.
However, in 2021, Cowlrick said the result of the change would not be as simple as women facing higher costs in future.
Vero’s largest rival IAG, which owns the State, NZI and AMI brands, said it had no plans to change the way it prices car insurance for its customers.
A spokesperson said: “Our car insurance pricing is based on a number of factors, including, a customer’s age, where they live, the make and model of their vehicle, their gender, the type of license they hold, years of driving experience, their claims history and number of accidents they have had, as well as the sum insured of the vehicle.”
Based in New York, Stephen Freeman is a Senior Editor at Trending Insurance News. Previously he has worked for Forbes and The Huffington Post. Steven is a graduate of Risk Management at the University of New York.