A predictable ruling for insurance industry becomes Euro assault on Sheila's Wheels

Normally, a story involving actuarial valuations struggles to inflame passions, let alone one about a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on actuarial valuations. But throw in a bit of well-timed Euro-bashing – the judgment coming in the wake of a controversial ruling on prisoner voting – and a large dollop of self-serving insurance industry lobbying and voila: the outrage flows freely.

The controversial ECJ ruling in question, which last week resolved a legal action brought by a Belgian consumer group, will stop insurers using gender as a factor in calculating premiums. In doing so, the court put an expiry date of December 2012 on an opt-out granted to the insurance industry to an earlier European Union equality directive. The practical impact when the opt-out ends is that insurers will not be able to continue to charge young women less than men for car insurance on the basis that women statistically have less accidents. Pension incomes for retiring men, likewise currently bolstered by men's shorter average life expectancy, are also expected to fall.

It's fair to say the general reaction in the media has been negative – the mad Eurocrats forcing poor insurers to charge more and pay out less, etc. All this is a bit of a stretch. For one, changing the factors on which insurance premiums are calculated should be largely about how you cut the cake, not changing its size. In isolation, forcing insurers to change their calculations should create as many winners as losers. But the rather less palatable outcome of the ruling is that some insurance insiders expect the industry to seize the opportunity to 'price up' in the way that retailers did with the introduction of the euro – all the more reason to create convenient cover in the form of foreign judges.

Barlow Lyde & Gilbert personal injury partner Mark Hemsted says the impact on the insurance industry will be more evolutionary than has been claimed, with providers focusing on women drivers likely to rebrand and insurers generally starting to focus on driver-specific factors like occupation, post code and claims history.

Norton Rose corporate insurance partner Ashley Prebble, likewise, comments: "Rather than see insurers disappear from the market as a result, it will be interesting to see if there are any new entrants offering more competitive prices for the under 30s, who might be hit by the change."

Critics of the judgment may also want to reflect that classing all young male drivers as high risk is also a convenient means for insurers to boost their margins while driver-specific factors should create stronger incentives for safe driving.

True, it does remain highly debatable how desirable a ruling is that limits the ability of insurers to use well-established statistical factors, but the case is certainly less clear cut than critics have allowed. And many lawyers have noted that the ruling was widely expected given last year's preliminary opinion from the advocate general and because the ECJ had limited room for manoeuvre given the scope and wording of the 2004 Directive.

Clyde & Co corporate insurance partner Andy Tromans sums up this less tabloid-friendly take nicely: "The way in which the changes are being implemented is actually quite pragmatic. The original directive anticipated a five-year review and what the ECJ has said is that the outcome of the review has effectively been decided now. In our view, this means that insurers can be very confident that the current practices are in compliance with UK and EU law until the end of 2012. If the judgment had required immediate or retrospective change, it would have created a huge problem. It could have been a lot worse."