There’s been a lot of talk about whether the EU’s new ruling on gender neutral pricing for protection policies, which comes in at the end of the year, will necessitate a huge hike in prices leading to a ‘closing down sale’ towards the end of the year.
Putting aside all thoughts relating to whether, across the entire range of protection products out there, providers and reinsurers should be forced to price in this way, my experience with our own products shows that clients really like the idea.
The pricing of Practice Cover’s locum insurance is not only gender neutral, it’s age neutral as well. The appeal of this particularly comes into its own in a group situation.
A GP, dental, veterinary practice or similar, comprising a number of key people whose absence needs to be insured often includes a mixture of men and women. This, coupled with a wide disparity in ages, can mean that in a ‘practice’ policy the older female lives cost considerably more to insure than the older male lives and substantially more than the younger males.
I have seen situations where practices have decided in the past not to buy purely because they were unable to overcome the internal wrangling which differential pricing caused.
That’s’ why it’s often such a relief when we tell them that, for their Practice Cover locum insurance, we don’t need to know the age or the gender of those who need cover and that they will all be charged the same per £ of sum insured.
So whether gender-neutral pricing is ‘right’ across the board remains debatable but if it gets people talking about protection, that will be a welcome spin-off. And at Practice Cover we’ll be able to say ‘gender neutral locum insurance? We’ve done that all along’ .
Author: Lynda Cox, March 2012
The opinions presented in this blog are solely those of the author on behalf of Practice Cover Limited and they do not constitute individual advice.
