Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Test-Achats case definition

What does Test-Achats case mean? Shorthand for the Court of Justice of the European Union ruling that insurers must not use sex as a factor in setting insurance premiums or benefits, so annuities and other insurance products must be priced on a gender‑neutral (unisex) basis for new contracts from 21 December 2012. In practice, it ended higher annuity rates for men and lower rates for women. The term derives from case law: Association belge des Consommateurs Test‑Achats ASBL v Conseil des ministres (Case C‑236/09), which declared invalid Article 5(2) of Directive 2004/113/EC (the Gender Directive) with effect from that date. Key features and use: - Applies to premiums...

Test-Achats: unisex insurance pricing, 'new contract' guidance, and the continuing use of sex-based actuarial factors in occupational pension schemes

Published by a LexisNexis Pensions expert

Practice notes

This Practice Note examines the implications of the EU judgment Association belge des Consommateurs Test-Achats v Conseil des Ministres (the test-achats case) and other pertinent law for the use of sex-based actuarial factors in insurance products and occupational pension schemes. For guidance on whether EU judgments bind UK courts, see Practice Note: Assimilated law — Assimilated case law.

Common insurance practices before the Test-Achats case

Before the Test-Achats case, insurers commonly followed several standard approaches:

statistically, women are expected to live longer than men, so insurers typically offered women lower annuity rates for the same capital sum because payments had to be made for a longer period
statistically, men are involved in more car accidents than women, so insurers often charged men (particularly young men) higher premiums for motor cover
statistically, women are more likely than men to claim on health-related insurance, so insurers frequently charged women higher premiums for those policies

These outcomes stemmed from placing men and women into distinct classes for risk assessment across products. Insurers applied these distinctions for pricing and benefit calculation purposes...

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Elizabeth Ovey

Radcliffe Chambers

Elizabeth has a general Chancery practice with particular emphasis on pensions (developing from the trust side of her practice) and on retail financial services (developing from an early specialisation in building society law). She also does a considerable amount of professional negligence work in these areas and other areas in which a Chancery background is of assistance.Her first substantial involvement in pensions law came when she was instructed in relation to a small miners’ pension scheme during the days of the miners’ strikes in the 1980s and she has done an increasing amount of pensions work since those days. She is a contributing editor of Halsbury’s Laws vol. 80 (Personal and Occupational Pensions) (2020). She is now on the Lexis PSL pensions section editorial board and is a contributor to Lexis PSL through a series of practice notes on various aspects of...

Web page updated on 22/05/2026

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