GENERAL INSURANCE

General insurance typically provides coverage for a range of non-life risks. It is designed to protect individuals, businesses, and assets from financial losses arising due to unforeseen events such as accidents, natural disasters, theft, liability or legal claims.

I can broker the following types of insurance contracts for you:

• Personal Liability Insurance
• Home Contents Insurance
• Legal Protection Insurance
• Buildings Insurance
• Motor Insurance

Personal Liability Insurance

Personal liability insurance (Privathaftpflichtversicherung) is considered in Germany as a must-have. However, expats living and working in Germany do not always recognize its importance. Germany’s legal and insurance system is somewhat different from what most of the new expats have experienced in their home country. As a result, a significant proportion of them has certain misunderstandings about the need of getting personal liability insurance and keep postponing it until they’re forced to face an event that threatens to play havoc with their personal finances and cause a huge amount of stress.

Just imagine you’re riding with your bike to work and inadvertantly collide with another biker who falls from his bike and breaks his spine. It is of course an event which is unlikely to happen to you, but believe it or not, it this and similar events happen everyday somewhere in Germany and the damage inflicted can easily go into the millions.

While you can’t undo your or your family members’ actions leading to unintentional material, physical or financial damage to third parties, having a personal liability insurance gives you peace of mind, knowing that your insurer would deal with their financial implications, which could sometimes be quite higher than your financial capability to handle them, and in most cases much higher than what you would pay as premium for your coverage.

Get in touch with me so I can assist you in not only in choosing the right personal liability insurance plan for you and your family, but also and foremost when shit hits the fan and you’re facing a claim from a third party.

Household Contents Insurance

Household contents insurance (Hausratversicherung), though not mandatory in Germany, is necessary to cover any damage to or loss of the contents of your home. It will indemnify you in the event the content of your home are damaged or lost due to storms, mains water, fire, theft, electrical surges and/or vandalism, depending on the coverage you opt for.

The easisest way to figure out what items are covered by a household contents insurance is to imagine yourself turning your house or flat upside down. Anything that falls out of it is insured, including furniture (which could optionally consist of built-in kitchen units), collectibles, clothing, computers and valuables for personal use, and sports equipment.

Note that property owners typically request their tenants to have or subscribe to a household content insurance coverage, particularly when the property is rented furnished.

Get in touch with me so I can assist you in choosing the right household contents insurance plan for you.

Legal Protection Insurance

Did you know that nearly 60% of all households in Germany possessed a legal protection insurance (Rechtsschutzversicherung) in 2022 (23,4 mio. legal insurance contracts for 40,903 mio. households – source: https://de.statista.com), and that the trend is rising? That means the risk of getting sued for issues that may seem trivial to you is actually pretty high. Add to that the fact that you, as an expat, probably are not well-versed with the rules and regulations of the german legal system and the purpose of a legal protection insurance should become obvious to you.

Get rid of unnecessary stress when having to face a legal issue, regardless of whether you are being sued or have to sue someone, by subscribing to a legal protection insurance, which covers court fees, sollicitor’s fees and the costs of proceedings, which can easily add up to a few thousand €uros.

As with most other type of insurances, the cost of a legal protection insurance depends not only on your personal situation, but also on the extent of coverage. The four major areas which can be covered by a legal protection insurance are:

• Private-related legal issues
• Employment-related legal issues
• Tenancy-related legal issues
• Traffic-related legal issues

Note that, typically, a waiting period applies before the coverage of a legal protection insurance gets active and that any legal issue which arose before a legal protection insurance was applied for is commonly excluded from the coverage.

Get in touch with me so I can assist you in choosing the right legal protection insurance plan for you.

Buildings Insurance

Buildings insurance (Wohngebäudeversicherung) is usually only relevant to you if you are a house owner (unless you own an entire appartment building), because apartments nearly always come with building insurance for the entire apartment building. It covers damage caused to the property itself, including walls, roof, floors, ceilings, garages and sheds. In the event of damage, the entire building, including all permanently installed objects like fitted kitchens and bathrooms, is insured.

Hazards such as fire, lightning, storms and hail, and water damages are commonly included in the basic coverage of a buildings insurance. In the event of your property being destroyed entirely by one or more of these hazards, the insurance company will cover the cost of building a new, similar property at today’s prices, including the architect, construction and planning costs. Should your property become inhabitable, you will also get cover for the cost of renting an alternative accomodation in addition to the cost of your property being repaired.

Are you a real estate mogul owning entire appartment buidings or simply a home owner looking for the best insurance coverage for your real estate?

Get in touch with me so I can assist you in choosing the right buildings insurance plan for you.

Motor Insurance

Have you just bought your dream car? Congratulations, but keep in mind it is mandatory in Germany to have at least third-party liability motor insurance (Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung) for you to be able to register it and start cruising with it. To that end, you’ll have to present the registration officer with, among other documents, an electronic insurance confirmation (elektronische Versicherungsbestätigung aka eVB) number you’ll get issued from the motor insurance company.

Apart from the compulsory third-party liability motor insurance coverage, you may add either a comprehensive motor insurance (Kraftfahrzeugvollkaskoversicherung) or a third-party fire and theft motor insurance (Teilkaskoversicherung) coverage. It goes without saying that the more coverage you choose, the more expensive the premium gets.

Don’t be fooled by the offers you find on motor insurance offer comparison websites the like of Check24. You don’t always get the best value for your money when using such websites and often times I get my clients a cheaper rate with better coverage, not to mention a multilingual, personal customer care available in five different languages at any time.

Get in touch with me so I can assist you in choosing the right motor insurance plan for you.