Well that depends upon what you mean by fair. That may not be very helpful, but I will explain.

The recently introduced FCA Insurance Pricing Remedy and Customer Duty regulations, together with the earlier Treating Customers Fairly requirements have increased the focus upon insurers' prices beingfair. However what is judged as fair is dependent up the context.

Firstly individuals tend to judge fairness on a pricing policy by the price they are charged. If that is in line with what they expect based upon previous experiences then they will tend to judge it as fair. In which case they tend not to consider the matter further.

If they are not convinced the price they are charged is fair they will tend judge the fairness in a social context and how their price compares to what others pay. They can choose to place their emphasis of three alternative views of fairness;

• It is Equitable? in that the price reflects the value and customers get what they pay for.
• It is Equal? in that everybody can get the same price
• It is based upon Needs? so special consideration is given to those less fortunate.

Not surprisingly peoples' choices are strongly influenced by their own circumstances and whether they see themselves as winners or losers under one of these views. You'll also notice that often these three views are contradictory.

The debate on Gender Pricing pitched the legal view with its emphasis on Equal against an insurance risk view which emphasised Equity and paying a price based upon the risk.

The tensions over Flood insurance arise from trying to balance a Equity view of fairness so tax payers or low risk properties aren't expected to subsidise high risk properties with a Needs view which argues for special consideration for high risk properties to keep prices "affordable".

Insurers' view of fair pricing almost always starts from an Equity view based upon the traditional underwriting stance that the price should reflect the value of the risk. However, as the two examples above show this is not always the same view that the everyone else will adopt. So any pricing structure is exposed to the challenge of being unfair simply by adopting a stance based upon one of the three view. Hence "my well its depends.." remark.