I will talk about all the insuranceances I have in Switzerland as a working expert, both mandatory and complimentary, and exactly how much they cost to me. Hi, I’m Mariam. I’ve been living in Switzerland for more than 7 years now. And on this channel, I share my personal experiences and guides on navigating life in Switzerland, from flat hunting to maternity and more. When I first started scripting this video, I didn’t know that one of the insuranceances I’m going to talk about would save me my peace of mind the very same day. But more on this in the end of this video. Let’s start with the mandatory and instead of starting with the mandatory health insurance that all of us know, let’s start with less obvious ones that we as employees pay before we get our paycheck. In Switzerland, employees contribute to several mandatory social insuranceances. The main one is ABS or old age and survival insurance and it takes 5.3% of your salary and funds retirement pension and support for surviving dependence. Invalidity insurance is included into that ABS rate and provides income if person becomes disabled. Another insurance that is directly deducted from the salary is unemployment insurance and it takes 1.1% and provides benefits if you lose your job. Also,
all employees that work more than 8 hours per week have an accident insurance that cover medical costs and lost earning after an accident work and nonwork related. And my salary slip says that it’s around 1% of my salary. Although some employers cover this cost completely. Also, most employees contribute to second pillar pension fund to complement ABS. It’s typically between 7 and 15% of your salary depending on your age, the older the higher, and on the insurance provider’s plan. These are all social securities that are deducted from my salary. To be fair, your employer pays the same on your behalf or even more, especially for the second pillar. Let me know in the comments whether you paid attention into those numbers in your pay slip or you just accepted those deductions without digging into what it is. Next, some small but still important insurance such as personal responsibility insurance. Legally, it’s not mandatory, but good luck
renting a flat without it. Our costs 150 Franks per year. Natural hazard insurance called EKA in our region at least covers your home and belongings against natural disasters. Price for this insurance depends on the size of your flat and cost your belongings and our costs 70 per year. And here we come to the beloved mandatory health insurance or basic health insurance. It covers medically necessary treatments and prescriptions, but only really necessary ones. Prices vary a lot between countons and also depends on your age, franchise, plan, and provider. Every year, we pick the cheapest one. And in 2025, it’s 390 Swiss Franks per month for a 30 years old adult in Lausan. That’s it for the mandatory insuranceances. around 15% of my salary goes to the social insurancees. Then around couple of hundreds per year go to personal responsibility and natural hazard insurance that’s for family and around 4700 Swiss Franks per year goes to mandatory health insurance. Now let’s move to the complimentary insuranceances. And here we logically start with an addition to our basic health insurance which is complimentary health insurance. My complimentary health insurance costs 55 thanks per months and it reimburses part of my gym membership, sport classes,
wellness treatment and massages. The main reason I have it, it also covers complimentary medicine like complimentary prescriptions and medical expenses while traveling. And here we come to my travel insurance that I have with the UBS credit card. It costs 100 Franks per year and it covers canceled flights, lost luggage, theft, medical expenses, although those are also covered by my other insurance. I will probably cancel this insurance as I’m going to change my bank. Car insurance, it’s not actually mine. It’s my husband’s, but I thought that it might be of interest to some of you to include this into this list. So, our car insurance costs 2,000 Franks per year, which is nearly full Costco coverage, which is Costco with some deductibles. Prices depend on cars value, canton, and driver’s age. The next one is life insurance, also known as 3B pillar. This one costs 60 Franks for our family. We’ve got it quite recently as a family because
we have taken on some financial responsibilities that we want to protect no matter what happens. I’ll share more about those responsibilities in upcoming videos. So stay tuned. When we were taking those responsibilities, I was looking for some additional information or real experiences online and I couldn’t find them. So I promise you lots of exclusive information coming soon on this channel. So subscribe so you don’t miss it. And the very last that we’ve got very recently and which saved my sanity during our summer holidays. This is legal protection insurance. I have been thinking of getting this insurance for quite a long time but I was postponing this decision because I wanted to find the perfect one that has English support etc. But in the end after two false calls of police on us I decided that that’s time and luckily uh we subscribe to the legal protection insurance just few days before something happened abroad. Um I don’t want to disclose everything but a person accused us in criminal offense.
Long story short the police had to make a criminal record and told us to wait for the decision by post. We still don’t know exactly what we are accused of and what will be the consequences and how far this will go. But uh back then knowing that we have this insurance and that we would have um legal protection and legal help if needed really saved my sanity. I was so happy that I had it because this happened I think less than a week or exactly one week after the starting date of our insurance. I believe that case will be closed anyway because it’s nonsense and most likely we will not need the help from this insurance but at that moment just knowing that we have this legal insurance was priceless or 530 Franks per year. So, these are all the insuranceances we have right now. Let me know in the comments if I missed something important. Also, let me know in the comments which insuranceances you have and what was useful in this video. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video. Until then, take care.
