From 21 December 2012 onwards, it will no longer be allowed to treat men and women differently in calculating insurance premiums and benefits for new contracts in Europe. Underwriters are obliged to put into practice a landmark judgment passed by the European Court of Justice on 1 March 2011. The implementation of the verdict represents a restriction on the insurers' practices of risk classification. Gender status is currently still used as a risk-rating factor for some product lines, mainly motor, private health, term life and pension annuity insurances. With a ban on gender, the underwriters lose an important and cheap factor for their risk assessment, which is likely to be reflected in rising premiums for some policies and - in an overall view - a less efficient market allocation. This paper therefore discusses the legal reasoning behind the judgment before analysing possible impacts of it. In a second part, likely reactions from the market side will be presented. For some products at least, solutions to implement gender-neutral pricing can already be found today. Additionally, a chapter about the special case of Switzerland, which is excluded from the European Court of Justice's scope of application, is provided at the end.