Women's Risk in LIfe by the Chartered Insurance Institute Part 1

I read an interesting report the other day by the Chartered Insurance Institute. The report summarizes the current research on risks women have in life and how this affects their pension. The report called Women’s Risks in Life: An interim report into risk, exposure and resilience to risk in Britain today. I will summarize my view of the report over the next few posts. For the full pdf report go here 

The report does not paint a positive picture but it does talk about how the insurance profession may improve its response to women’s needs. This involves understanding the current status of the profession’s relationships with women as customers and drawing on the Women’s Risks in Life work (this interim report and the full version to be published during 2017, and additional deep dives) to highlight areas of focus for reviews aimed at improvement and innovation. The problems faced by women in England are faced by women in all parts of the world.

There is still a significant pay gap with women earning far less than men. This has profound effects on women’s life choices, independence, resilience to shocks, and preparedness for later life

· Women, and particularly those with children, are more likely to feel financially insecure. 1 in 2 women with three or more children said that their money would not last a month if they lost their primary income, compared with just 1 in 4 women without children.

· Women are now outperforming men in education, being 9 percentage points more likely to go to university and those that do are 4 percentage points more likely to get a good degree. Women and men aged 22–29 now earn the same. However, a significant gender pay gap opens up later on; women working full time in their 40s earn 12% less than men. This is related to a motherhood pay penalty, whereby women who have children before the age of 33 earn significantly less than both men and women without children.

· On average women in full-time work earn over 9% less than men, down from 17% in 1997.

· Women are more likely to be low paid than men – they are nearly twice as likely to be earning below the statutory minimum wage (1.7% compared with 1.0%), and far more likely to be