ABI says it did all it could to oppose Euro gender ruling

11 March 2011 11:35 am | By Natalie Holt

The Association of British Insurers has hit out at suggestions it did not do enough to influence the European Court of Justice’s ruling on the use of gender in pricing products.

Last week, the ECJ ruled insurers cannot price products such as annuities and life ins- urance according to gender from December 21, 2012.

Finance & Technology Research Centre director Ian McKenna says the ruling serves as a “nail in the coffin” for the ABI. He believes it should have done more. He says: “It appears that the message to the industry has been not to rock the boat, otherwise it will be worse. But how much worse can it be? This demonstrates the ABI is not fit for purpose. The whole industry has every right to feel let down.”

Lifesearch senior policy adviser Matt Morris says: “The ABI was certainly not very vocal about the ruling in the trade press, so I think publicly it could have done more.”

An ABI spokesman says: “People need to understand the process that is involved here. You cannot lobby a court. We have done a lot of lobbying up to this point. In fact, if it was not for our lobbying and lobbying by the Government we would not have secured the original exemption from the EU gender directive in the first place.

“The suggestion that we have not done what we sho- uld have been doing is one that we would refute most vehemently.”

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