- By Maryam Ahmed
- BBC Verify
Car insurance quotes were a third more expensive in some areas of England with the biggest minority ethnicity populations, BBC Verify has found.
We collected thousands of quotes based on identical driver information, but with different addresses.
Areas with a high number of people from ethnic minorities saw higher prices, even when road accident and crime levels were similar.
The insurance industry body said ethnicity was not a factor in pricing.
But Citizens Advice said the findings added to evidence of an “ethnicity penalty”.
Address effect
When you apply for car insurance, the price takes into account factors including your address, age and driving history.
But it is not known exactly how that calculation works, because insurance firms do not make the information publicly available.
To shed some light on this process, we tested the effect of changing a driver’s address on the cost of insurance.
We chose 6,000 addresses from a spread of more and less wealthy and diverse areas, selecting 20 in the most deprived and 20 in the least deprived for…
