The digital tribe of YouTubers, bloggers and social media marketers simply haven’t existed as far as the UK car insurance industry is concerned – until now.
While ancient, outdated or incredibly niche occupations including agisters, almoners and ostlers are catered for by the Association of British Insurers, modern careers in digital media do not appear on the lists used by insurers to rate car insurance premiums.
Now specialist broker Adrian Flux, which has a number of high-profile YouTubers on its books, has brought the rating rule-books up to date by adding a number of overlooked occupations to its official list.
“When was the last time you bumped into an agister or an ostler?” said general manager Gerry Bucke.
“Cardinal is also on the list, which is great for the one cardinal in the UK, but the rapid recent growth of careers in digital media has clearly caught the ABI out and the list is very much in need of an update.”
The ABI lists more than 2,100 occupations, and premiums are partially rated according to years of data collected about the claims rates of motorists in each job.
But with newer career paths opening up in the past 20 years thanks to the advent of the internet and social media, tens of thousands of motorists could be paying inaccurate premiums as insurers are unable to rate them according to their exact profession.
“Until we start building up data about these new jobs, we won’t know exactly how to rate them,” added Mr Bucke, who is keen to build up a profile of the risks involved in insuring a YouTuber compared to, say, a traditional actor or film-maker.
“At the moment we have to guess a little, and rate them according to the closest occupation we can find, but once we have them registered correctly we will be able to build a more accurate picture,” he added.
There are only five known agisters in the UK (they help with the management of commoners’ livestock in the New Forest), but tens of thousands of social media managers, email marketers and search engine optimisation consultants remain invisible to insurers.
Other occupations added to Flux’s lists include email marketer, professional gamer, drone operator and app developer.