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In 2012 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that gender is no longer allowed to be a factor when premiums are calculated for "everything from pensions to car and life insurance".

I assume this is based on discrimination law, of which gender is only one of a list of protected characteristics. This starts with age, but direct age discrimination is allowed with objective justification which seems easy in this case. Also on the list is "being married or in a civil partnership", which is a question that they ask when getting car insurance.

Is it legal for companies, such as car insurance firms and pension companies, to vary their prices according to marital or civil partnership status?

Note this is a question about the law. If your answer comes down to a question of fact I have probably made a mistake with the question. Assume that the companies are able to demonstrate statistically that both women and married people have lower rates of car insurance claims relative to men/single people. I think this would count as objective justification.

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    Car insurance adjusts for other occupants because of the risk they might drive the car. Americans get pinched by that when their kids grow up and they don't tell the insurer that they have a 14 year old who might hypothetically drive the car without permission.
    – Harper - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jun 28 at 4:50
  • I never understood the ban on using gender to calculate insurance costs. If we know (young) male drivers are more risky clients, shouldn't it just make sense for them to pay more? The same way other risks are counted in insurance prices. That is at least assuming the math actually works that way, and the insurance companies aren't just overcharging because there's an impression that male drivers are more risky.
    – ilkkachu
    Commented Jun 28 at 8:20
  • @Harper-ReinstateMonica, they get pinched, like how?
    – ilkkachu
    Commented Jun 28 at 8:21
  • @ilkkachu Usually there's a statement in the insurance policy which goes "failure to update the above information about client's situation within XX days invalidates the insurance". Which means you get may get in trouble in case of an accident if your 14 year old kid is in the car, which could be visible to the insurance via police reports or hospital bills. Or you may have several different insurances with the same company, so they already know about your kids.
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    Commented Jun 28 at 12:59
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    @Servaes (also, I live in a Western democracy that by law requires males but not females to serve at the state's whim for 6 to 12 months with negligible pay, so yeah, do tell me about gender discrimination being unconstitutional...)
    – ilkkachu
    Commented Jun 28 at 16:53

2 Answers 2

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The UK is no longer an EU member and is able to depart from EU Directives (although in this case that hasn't happened, yet).

The Act here is UK law, the Equality Act 2010

The particular areas to review are Part 2, Chapter 1, which lists the protected characteristics, of which marriage and civil partnership is one.

In section 28, it then provides that marriage & civil partnership is NOT a protected characteristic for service providers. In other words, it's lawful to charge someone more or less for being married or not. This protected characteristic DOES apply in employment - you can't discriminate when hiring, or in the course of employment on grounds of marriage/civil partnership - just not in service provision.

BTW, it's suggested that treating married and civil partnerships specifically differently is indirect discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, which IS a protected characteristic for service providers.

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  • Can you have a civil partnership between a man and a woman, or does that only exist as a marriage alternative for same-sex couples? If so, how is it sexual orientation discrimination if you treat them differently from a married man+woman?
    – Barmar
    Commented Jun 26 at 17:42
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    Originally a civil partnership was introduced as a compromise: marriage is between a man and a woman, whereas a civil partnership was introduced to allow two people of the same sex. This was changed so that 1) people of the same sex were allowed to marry 2) people of the opposite sex wanted to have a c.p. rather than marriage, and felt the law was discrminatory and this is now possible 3) cps can be convert to marriages. Currently the ratio of s.s to o.s. c.p is 1:8, and for marriage 1:30. This difference in ratio is likely to be sufficient to qualify as indirect discrimination.
    – thelawnet
    Commented Jun 26 at 18:45
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    @thelawnet "This difference in ratio is likely to be sufficient to qualify as indirect discrimination." - has there ever been such a court ruling, or do you have any source for that claim?
    – Riwen
    Commented Jun 27 at 7:40
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    there's a source here: citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/…. It seems a reasonable interpretation to me.
    – thelawnet
    Commented Jun 27 at 20:35
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I assume [the ECJ ruling] is based on discrimination law, of which gender is only one of a list of protected characteristics.

This is incorrect. The ECJ does not interpret or enforce UK national law, and did not when the UK was part of the EU.

The ECJ's ruling (as described here) was based on directive 2004/113/EC, which specifically prohibited unequal treatment between men and women. It did not address marriage.

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