How to break a car insurance

Life Hacking
1

Hi Dear,

I’m new on this blog and discover that I did terrible financial choices in the past.

I started to optimise some insurances and I’m stuck in a point. I did not see when I sign my contract but my insurance (Mobilière) nicely put an expiration date after 5 years. I seen after some reaserch that I can save ~600CHF per year with another insurance with the same prestations. But i’m stuck with the Mobilière until may 2025.

Does anyone already succeed to broke a car insurance contract before the expiracy date?
I heard that I can change the plates and the “grey card” of the car.

Does anyone already do that? How to proceed?

Thanks for your help.

Simon

2

I head that you can “sell” the car to your GF and buy it back after 1 week with new plates → new contract

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3

some insurances have an additional text saying that you have the option to break the contract earlier. of course they charge some peanuts for that. if you have that then no problem breaking it.
otherwise do as @SwissTeslaBull recommends. sell the car, once it’s deregistered in strassen verkehrsamt the insurance is suspended. you then have the option to call them and void it.

4

Sell your car to your GF. New owner => New contract.

5

„Selling“ the car will result in costs for the plates and the carte grise…

Alternatives:

  1. show the offer to mobiliar and ask them for a discount

  2. if you have a full kasko insurance, check if you dont have a damage you didnt announce them for example a parkingdamage → after every claim you can opt out from the contract

  3. change the coverage of the contract to liability only (rc) and do the rest (kasko) somwhere else

  4. change something small in the contract and request a yearly cancellation right, then you can cancel every year.

Best, Balaclava

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6

Thank you all for your answer. I’ll probably find a good way for cancel this contract.

Best regards :wink:

7

Do you guys know if this is possible “mid-year” of the contract too? (Insurance contract runs with the calendar year)
I am switching from a lease into a takeover in a couple of weeks, and was thinking of cutting the full kasko out after that is complete.
Staying with the same company however.

8

Yes, you can do it per any date. Just request an offer only with the liability with a start date of today.

1 Like
9

In that case, is the insurance paying back for the “unused” premium ? IE if you were 6 months in, do you get back 50% of the yearly premium when canceling? We are bond to 5-years expensive contracts (yep, sold by the same 3A pillar salesman :dizzy_face:) but our cars have tiny parking damages : this is tempting! Isn’t making a claim going to raise the premium for other insurance offers though?

10

Hi Stef,

Yes the non-used insurance premium is even paid back - IF its not in the first year of the contract. There is this exeption in the law in order to cover the setup-fees from the insurance but after the first year, you are good to go… Fun fact: This basically applies to almost every insurance based on the VVG (Versicherungsvertragsgesetzt) so you can even cancel your additional health insurance after getting a massage or a fitness membership :slight_smile:

So considering the parking damages you need to know the following:

  1. If you have a special coverage for parking damages, check the covered amount (there a versions like: unlimited, 1k, 2k, 3k) and check the deductible of that coverage (ranges from 0.- to a few k as well)

  2. If you don’t have a parking damage coverage included, but still have full-kasko, it will be covered after the kasko-deductible which is mostly 1k or CHF 500.-

  3. If you don’t have full-kasko but a partial kasko, it might work as well but then you need to find a damage which is covered, for example a crack in your windshield etc.

  4. If 1-3 is checked and you have a damage where the damage-value is above the deductible, you can go ahead and then your question triggering a premiumraise with the new insurance is relevant:

4.1. If you didn’t had any claim of any kind with your car insurance in the last 3-5 years the impact might be low to zero, since most insurances ignore 1 claim.

4.2. If you had more than one claim in the past 3-5 years, you should be more cautious and get quotes where you indicate the claims before you declared them to the old insurance.

4.3 If you have a parking-damage coverage now and won’t get it with the new insurance, the claimhistory won’t matter…

  1. And now something which very few persons know but is a real mustachian move: When you have a claim with any insurance, specially with cars → you are not obliged to have the repair done! That means that if you have a parking damage which would cost 2k to fix, you can decided to have it fixed, or to take the money (they only deduce the VAT). So since I don’t give a damn about the exteriors of my car, I once decided to have a big hail damage fully paid out (8.8k) → You have to inform them while declaring the claim, that you will decide later and want first them to estimate the damage-amount, then no repair will be done before your decision.

  2. If you downgrade your insurance, do what you want but I still strongly encourage you to keep the coverage for gross negligance (grobfahrlässigkeit) - its very cheap but could save you seven digits in a worst-case scenario.

  3. The cheapest car insurances at the moment, based on my experience are the following and you can in most cases get a quote online:
    Dextra.ch, Smile-direct.ch, automate.ch, Allianz Suisse (no online offering) and a white label offer from Postfinance: PostFinance Autoversicherung | PostFinance

I suggest you check them out and conclude only yearly contracts, so that you can stay flexible.

I hope this helps,

Best, Balaclava

6 Likes
11

Does anybody know if the offer Comparis.ch makes you is anything good? When I try it with my car if seems to find an offer for 550CHF, but when I actually go to the insurance directly it’s always around 800. Does comparis actually negotiate a better deal, or is it just some scam to get my data?

12

They have some deals with some companies I guess :slight_smile: As you can contact them in order to setup news agreements.

13

Does this only apply if you have a 0 Franchise? Like for example, if your Franchise is 500 CHF, will they just deposit you 1’500 CHF without even making sure you perform the repair?

15

No it‘s a general practise not linked to a deductible, but you always have to inform them because they deduct the VAT if you want to have the amout due payed out to you instead of having the damage fixed.

16

we have to reduce our expenses, I noticed that my wife has a semi-comprehensive car insurance (I’m not entirely sure of the exact term) that costs about 990 CHF per year, with the contract set to expire in 2026.

I believe this premium is quite high, and I’m sure we can find a more affordable option.

Regarding your suggestion to switch to liability-only coverage (RC) and obtain comprehensive coverage (Kasko) elsewhere, it seems that the combined cost might still be around the same, with RC costing about 300-400 CHF and a new Kasko approximately 400-500 CHF. Am I right?

I’m seeking advice on the most cost-effective and simplest way to switch from our current provider, Mobiliar. If my wife transfers the car registration to my name, will it incur significant costs, and would it allow us to cancel/change the insurance? I’m not certain if this is relevant, but she recently paid the car tax.

Additionally, what other options might we have?

My wife also arranged a home insurance policy through Mobiliar, valid until 2032, at an annual cost of 460 CHF. She insists on using Mobiliar for all our insurance needs due to a positive past experience where she received full reimbursement without any issues. However, I am open to exploring more economical alternatives.

17

Concerning the car insurance, you normally can adapt the coverage during the contract. Contact them.

What dou you mean by home insurance? Is it your menage insurance or the building insurance (if you own your house).

18

You can have a look at Smile Direct for your home.
It should be slightly cheaper than La Mobilière

19

@Ardius Thank you for your reply.

You mentioned that “you normally can adapt the coverage during the contract.” I’m unsure how this would be advantageous for us. My main aim is to switch to a more cost-effective insurance provider.

Regarding our home insurance, it is accurately described as “Hausrat- und Privathaftpflichtversicherung,” which means Household contents and personal liability insurance. We are renters at the moment, and I’ve just looked over the bill; it’s 472 CHF annually and remains valid until the end of 2032.

@FunnyDjo, thanks for your advice.

Now, the pressing issue is: how do I go about cancelling this insurance policy? It’s becoming clear to me where a significant portion of our money is going. :sweat_smile:

20

There is a relatively recent regulation allowing you to cancel all long insurance contracts after 3 years (details here). So at least you should not need to pay until 2032 for your household insurance.

There may be other valid reasons allowing you to cancel an insurance policy, like after a claim.

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