How to break a car insurance

[Simon]

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

[SwissTeslaBull]

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

[lv24]

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.

[Ardius]

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

[Balaclava]

„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

[Simon]

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

Best regards

[dbu]

@Balaclava

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

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.

[Balaclava]

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

[stefbuet]

@Balaclava

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

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 ) 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?

[Balaclava]

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

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…

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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

[Double_A]

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?

[Yanikuza]

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