Dear Listener

Our lead story this week started on Monday morning in a cold muddy field and ended Thursday evening in an editing suite. It’s just three minutes long. Stories for television are shorter and take longer than stories for radio. It is worth it though. This week’s Money Box lead item seems set to be on TV, on radio and online. More later.

As we foreshadowed a couple of weeks ago the European Court of Justice ruled that insurance companies cannot use a customer’s sex to determine the premium they should pay. In future we will all swim in a unisex pool of risk – as I put it on Radio 4’s PM programme on Tuesday evening. Oh dear.

The surprise was that the Court gave insurers nearly two years to work out how to end this sex discrimination. The change will not have to happen until 21 December 2012 when the current concession which allows this sex discrimination was up for review anyway.

Equalising premiums for car insurance will mean men pay less than they do now, even though they are more likely than women to make big claims. Women, who are safer drivers, will pay more than they do now. On the other hand women will gain in retirement – getting the same pension as men for the same pension pot despite living longer and therefore drawing their pension for more years.

Life insurance premiums will be equalised too, rising for women and falling for men. When it comes to explaining why men currently pay more than women, I explained it rather badly earlier this week by saying ‘men are more likely to die than women’. One PM listener quickly pointed out that we are all 100% likely to die. But to justify my rather inept phrase – among any equal group of men and women in any one year there is a higher chance of a death among the men than the women.

Insurers have already paved the way to use the court ruling as an excuse to put up the average price of these products by warning that the cost of implementing the change will have to be paid by customers. And they may well use the change to move further towards individual pricing and away from pooling risk.

***IN MONEY BOX THIS WEEK***

Our lead story takes ex-soldier Billy McNaught to see a small piece of land he bought a few months ago for £10,000. An estate agent describes it as ‘a postage stamp in a park’ and tells him what his tiny plot is really worth – hint: not a lot. Why did he buy it? And, more important, why was he sold it? Landbanking makes a comeback.

Pensions Minister Steve Webb will be live on the programme to talk about boosting your state pension by paying extra contributions before the deadline for a special deal ends on 5 April. I will be asking him other things too, some raised by listeners to Money Box Live last Wednesday when we had a huge response to our phone-in on the state pension.

NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland have promoted their 14 point Customer Charter heavily both on television and, as they like to say, in branch. But how well has the bank (one bank, two names) done in meeting its pledges – which it has separated into 25 key customer targets? The Head of Retail tells us. And we also ask him…wait and see.

And as April 5th looms, banks, building societies and others vie for that coveted ‘best buy’ label for their cash ISAs? But what tricks do they use to get that table topping rate?

We hope to cover all of that in our all-too-brief 24 minute slot on Radio 4, live on Saturday just after noon. There’s no repeat this Sunday (true, even though there was one last week after I said there wouldn’t be) but you can listen any time via the podcast page www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moneybox. Check out our website www.bbc.co.uk/moneybox to follow links, download transcripts, send us stories or ideas you want us to look into and Have Your Say on landbanking.

This newsletter is available at bbc.co.uk/moneybox/newsletter around the time it hits your inbox (tell your friends who don’t subscribe) and you can join nearly 4000 others to keep up with my random but timely thoughts on money 24 hours a day at www.twitter.com/paullewismoney.

On Wednesday I will be back to take your questions on Money Box Live at 3pm. This week the topic is fraud especially bank accounts, plastic cards, and ID theft. How to avoid it and how to deal with it when it happens.

Best wishes,

Paul

PS the lead item will be running in a TV form every hour on Breakfast on BBC 1 and I shall be there live around 0820 and 0920. I am back on Breakfast on Thursday at 0640ish and then answering emails from viewers at 0810ish. Though all these times may vary.

e-mail Paul Lewis