Female-only car insurance

As insurance products go, female-only car insurance is a relative newcomer onto the scene.

However, the niche product has wasted no time in firmly establishing itself within the highly competitive market, with a host of specialist firms launching their own products amid a shower of far-reaching claims and multi-media bombardment.

Despite the hype, car insurance aimed specifically at female drivers can actually deliver savings, largely due to the fact that, generally speaking, women are involved in fewer accidents than their male counterparts.

According to the latest figures available on travel trends from the Office for National Statistics, in 2005, British men made 1,050 trips, while women made 1,080 trips, with the main reason for getting behind the wheel revealed to be to get to work and to go shopping for both groups respectively.

Though they made fewer journeys, in the same year some 555 per 100,000 men were either killed or injured while driving in comparison to just 381 per 100,000 for women.

Furthermore, Home Office figures for the years between 1999 and 2003 show that male drivers accounted for a staggering 94 per cent of all car accidents involving death or bodily harm as well as for 97 per cent of all dangerous driving convictions, 83 per cent of all speeding convictions and 85 per cent of all convictions for dangerous driving.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that insurance companies which choose to totally exclude men from their books should be able to offer discounted premiums and as such, these specialist providers ought to be the first stop for females looking for a new policy.

Niki Bolton, a spokesperson for one such company, Sheilas' Wheels, explained: "Women are statistically safer drivers; they have very different types of accidents and claims.

"So you're more likely to have the closer to home, bumps and scrapes and lower value claims, rather than men who tend to have larger accidents on motorways, more fatalities, more involvement with third parties, so that really hikes up the claim costs for men."

However, getting a females-only discount should only be the beginning for the financially-savvy woman driver.

Indeed, this niche sector has now become almost as competitive as the larger market, with insurance providers attempting to draw in customers with increasingly attractive offers.

For example, on top of a normal policy, female drivers who shop around can also benefit from such add-ons as handbag insurance, access to female-friendly repair workshops and garages and even phone helplines to offer support in the aftermath of an accident.