Female smokers may be choking on their insurance costs when the forthcoming EU Gender Directive comes into force on December 21st 2012.
The Directive states;
the use of sex as a factor in the calculation of premiums and benefits for the purposes of insurance and related financial services shall not result in differences in individuals’ premiums and benefits.
A recent study by Caledonian Life has examined the current differentials in life cover between men and women which show how wide they are. However, even more startling is that female smokers are likely to find that their life cover costs will jump dramatically when insurers will be obliged to quote for the same policy as they would a man.
As according to Greg Dyer Head of Sales and Marketing at Caledonian Life, given life insurance costs for male smokers are unlikely to fall, the corollary is that the hundreds of thousands of female smokers will have to pay more.
Women can however take early action to lock in their insurance policies before the 21st of December and Ocean Finance are assisting many to avoid the massive increases that are coming thier way.
In the interactive graph below, one can see how much less women smokers currently pay and shows the increasing premium amounts that would have to paid to match the male counterparts as they get older.
