In the Test-Achats judgement on 1 March last year the European Court of Justice ruled that different premiums for men and women equated to sex discrimination. Gender, or relating factors, used in premium prices were banned. And here we are - five months away from implementation.
And who remembers when everyone was saying this would never come into force? I know many who recall this "never in a million" attitude.
We are now tackling this very real shift - with some promising plans from the providers so far - but it feels spookily like age and disability could be tracing a similar pathway.
This is primarily because the Equal Treatment Directive in Europe is currently at draft stage. And it was at this stage with the Gender Directive that it all went awry.
It has been relatively reassuring to hear the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has acted in hindsight for the incoming Equal Treatment Directive. It has squeezed itself in to work closely with the powers that be on age and disability clause wording.
What Nick Kirwan, the ABI's assistant director of health and protection, has highlighted is that age and disability wording must not be victim to the same ambiguity the Gender Directive suffered. It was this fatal flaw with conflicting clauses that left gender vulnerable to the likes of Belgian consumer group Test Achats challenging it at ECJ level.
If the same happened with age and disability then where would we be? If it were to go through court with European law in place there would be nothing to stop it. It would just trump our equality act stipulations right out of the water.
But it was disappointing to hear from Kirwan that it would be "inappropriate" to detail the ABI's involvement in the process. I wanted specifics. And an update for the industry. But Kirwan would not be pressed. Nor have I heard anything since.
As Kirwan acknowledged, if these factors were to be removed from pricing, the meteorite-like impact would make gender neutrality look like the impression made from dropping a golf ball into sand.
A broker comment left on the COVER website summarised: "The insurance market will collapse".
So how much do we trust the ABI to stop this happening? And how influential will it be in really making a difference? What we do know is that it has a team of people dedicated to this issue. There is no reason to distrust it is working hard, but it is a widespread view of both advisers and insurers, that the ABI is simply failing to keep the industry updated.
One adviser pointed out that it was very rare to find the ABI on speaker lists for industry events. Said adviser added: "We will assume it is doing nothing or that its motivations are skewed if its support is very deliberately solely focused on its inside members."
However, having spoken to its inside members - the insurers - the feeling was the same. They had not recieved anything specific on this issue. It raises the question - is it something the ABI does not feel is a big enough concern to be talking about? Or is it just not adequately communicating the depth of the concern?
Although to his merit, Kirwan did present on this very issue at an industry conference recently. And he provided reassurance when interviewed by COVER that the ABI was very much aware of and working on the age and disability draft wording.
Test Achats has already brought cases on age discrimination to court at national level in Belgium. The outcome of which will be one to note. It is clearly not at panic button stage yet, but in the words of PruProtect, it would be foolish not to consider the reality of age and disability removal from pricing.
Majority opinion about the ABI is that the work it does can be, on the whole, very good. That is, when they know about it.
But many would argue that what it repeatedly fails to do, and seems to be doing in this instance, is communicate about its power and influence on some of the biggest issues of the day.
