[avaika]

Good point. There is a rumor among my local IT fellows, that some banks who also run an insurance companies (or partner with some) share transaction information with insurance guys to help them identify whether discount is possible for a specific person or not. E.g. if someone frequently spends a lot of money in pubs, most likely that someone will have health issues sooner or later. So better to increase the insurance fee.

For sure such information trading is illegal, but as the government doesn't give a single care, most likely it is true.

[clubm8]

>There is a rumor among my local IT fellows, that some banks who also run an insurance companies (or partner with some) share transaction information with insurance guys to help them identify whether discount is possible for a specific person or not. E.g. if someone frequently spends a lot of money in pubs, most likely that someone will have health issues sooner or later.

Or worse, what if they decide you had too much pub spending/fast food, so you can't get that new organ you need?

I keep my "entertainment" budget (pubs, eating out, etc) in cash for this reason.

[crispyporkbites]

This doesn't make much sense - insurance is about sharing risk amoung common entities, so increasing the premiums based on risk on micro-factors isn't really that helpful. You would probably get good enough performance from a couple of basic, easily obtained variables (age, weight, family history), instead of tracking, organizing and figuring out all of these variables.

[ryacko]

Still, they can decide how high a risk a person is by how much they withdraw in cash.