Equality Officer, Office of the Director of Equality Investigations, 3 Clonmel Street, Dublin 2. Dear Equality Officer, David Green of Clonsilla, Dublin 15 is paying £359.61 per month (£4,072.61 for the Year) to Quinn Direct for car insurance. Therefore the discrimination is on going. He was born on 29/01/81 and drives a standard family car (1.4 Litre Honda Civic). David wrote to Quinn Direct Insurance Company on 20-11-00 asking them to explain why they are charging him such a high Car Insurance premium (Copy of letter sent previously and attached). Their reply dated 24th of November 2000 argues that age and lack of experience and a provisional licence were the major factors when arriving at this premium. The reasons we believe Quinn-direct are discriminating on the basis of age is as follows. The age factor typically doubles the risk. The Irish Insurance Federation Factfile 1998 says on page 27 "the relative claims cost (a combination of frequency and cost of claims) for non-comprehensive insurance was 97% higher for policyholders aged between 17 and 24 than it was for the 36 to 40 age group. For comprehensive insurance, it was 66% higher for the 17 to 24 age group than for the 36 to 40 group". It is possible to deduce from these figures that young drivers taken as a group represent approximately twice the average risk. The average insurance premium for a motorist in Ireland is £480. David Green is being charged £4,072.61 or 8.5 times that amount. The IIF facts are backed up by research carried out by the National Roads Authority and published in their report ‘Young Driver Accidents 1997’. The first line of the summary says "Young Male Drivers (17-24 yrs) account for 10.8 per cent of all drivers killed". The Department of the Environment document called ‘the Road to Safety’ in a section on the profile of Irish drivers on page 6 says "Also atypical is the low number of Irish people under 24 who are estimated by the European wide survey to drive regularly (6% of driving population compared to European average of 14%)". In other words Young men account for 10.8% of those killed and are a majority of the 6% of drivers who are young. Young men are twice or at worst three times as likely as other drivers to be killed on the road. Not having a full licence is not a major factor Not having a full licence does not explain the high premium. David was told that his renewal after one year with a full licence would be £3,554. The NRA report on Young Driver accidents says "Young Drivers with provisional licences, where a licence category was specified, were held to be to a large extent responsible in 55 per cent of accidents, compared with 45 per cent for young drivers with full licence". Lack of experience does not account for the huge difference. Lack of driving experience does not explain this extremely high premium. A fifty year old man with a provisional licence who is just starting to drive would have no difficulty getting insurance for under £1,500 all other things being equal. Living in Dublin significantly reduces the risk. The NRA report also shows that the young driver fatality per 100,000 population is 9.8 in Monaghan, 9.4 in Cavan, 8.8 in Louth, 8.6 in Donegal but is 1.2 in Dublin. The National average is 4.8. By combining the factors of age, lack of experience and provisional licence as is mentioned in the letter from Quinn Direct might justify a premium of three times the average. The fact that the Car is used in the relatively safe Dublin region would significantly off-set some of these other factors. The Fact that David is a young male and Insurance Companies have historically charged this group inflated premium is the only possible explanation for a premium 8.5 times the average. Insurance Companies are not reliable sources of actuarial data as they lack neutrality and are motivated by profit. We could possibly argue that the differences of treatment is not equal if we could get our hands on the relevant database. However the Insurance Industry are not compelled to make this data available to anyone and they guard their "Secrecy" carefully. We believe the Equality Authority have the power to gain access to this data and we would like to see the relevant database before we comment further. Quinn Direct also say in their reply that David is under no duress to take up insurance with them. Unfortunately that is not the case. He needs a car to get to work as he is a shift worker in IBM and their policy is cheapest he could get. Back Home