"It won’t affect me…"

Insurance Nightmare
Number One

(Or how to drive without insurance)

It’s insurance renewal time. You go into the local brokers, and ask the spotty-faced youth behind the desk for a competitive "fully comprehensive" quote.

The boy taps a few details into the terminal .. you can’t see what … but he’s hardly going to ask you what sex you are, is he?

Minutes later you’ve got another year’s cover, a bit cheaper than before and you leave .. pleased with the day’s work.

Some time later you are involved in a terrible accident. Some poor pedestrian is crippled and is going to have to sue you for the money to live on for the rest of their life.

It’s a tragedy .. but that’s why it is compulsory to have third party liability cover when you drive.

Days later it’s a different story though. The company’s loss adjuster has discovered you’re legally "male" and didn’t volunteer the fact that you underwent Gender Reassignment Surgery" ten years ago. The small print means your cover is void .. and next day a summons arrives, charging you with driving without insurance. Your car isn’t going to be repaired either, and you face compulsory bankruptcy to meet the pedestrian’s legal and medical expenses.

A horror story ? … Exaggeration ? … No. This is what can really happen if you fail to actually volunteer the information which the insurer may or may not decide is relevant to quoting you a price … even if the company doesn’t have a different rate for men and women.

Absurd and unfair, of course .. but so long as the insurers remain fundamentally ignorant about just who and what transsexual people are, and until they place the treatment into the same sort of "safe" category that applies to other life events, the "obligation of the customer to disclose any details which the insurer may consider relevant" means that you’re obliged to tell that spotty youth behind the counter something akin, in sensitivity, to the date of your very first period.

It is also by no means clear whether a change in the law, giving you legal recognition in your altered gender role, will eliminate this obligation.

This is why the British insurance industry poses the biggest single long term threat to the privacy and safety of transsexual people. Burying heads in the sand … trusting to luck … or just sorting out your own needs with a friendly broker won’t change the industry.

To change the industry, YOU have to help change it.