Health insurance companies: BKK Firmus merges twice – two health insurance companies disappear

Number could fall below 90

Wave of mergers: two more health insurance companies disappear

The number of health insurance companies continues to decline. BKK Firmus announces two mergers and thereby solves its own problem.

There is noticeable momentum in the market for health insurance companies. BKK Firmus, long known as Germany’s cheapest health insurance company, has announced two planned mergers.

On the one hand, the merger with the small BKK Rieker Ricosta Weisser (BKK RRW), based in Tuttlingen planned. The fund had a total of 3,118 insured people in 2024 and is only open to employees of the shoe manufacturers Rieker and Ricosta and the mechanical engineering company JG Weisser Söhne. The merger is scheduled to be completed on January 1st of next year.

Just a few days later, BKK Firmus announced the next planned merger – this time with BKK Pfaff. Originally a company health insurance fund for employees of the Kaiserslautern sewing machine manufacturer Pfaff, it was most recently open to insured people from all over Rhineland-Palatinate. According to its own information, BKK Pfaff had a total of 157,618 insured people in 2024. This merger should also take effect on January 1, 2027.

For BKK Firmus, the merger with BKK Pfaff in particular brings with it a major advantage. The Bremen health insurance company, which recently significantly expanded its membership to over 1.1 million insured people, suffered a setback in April of this year.

According to health insurance organization law, company health insurance companies are only allowed to accept insured people in federal states in which their historically grown sponsoring companies – i.e. companies with their own company health insurance company – have a permanent establishment. For example, if a company only has factories in Lower Saxony, the corresponding company health insurance company can only accept insured people there.

Due to organizational changes at their parent company Since April, BKK Firmus has not been able to accept any new insured people from six federal states. including Rhineland-Palatinate. This is now changing with the planned merger with BKK Pfaff. As of next year, BKK Firmus will again be open to people who live in Rhineland-Palatinate or have their employer there.

With the mergers now announced, the number of health insurance companies could fall further next year, assuming the approval of the Federal Office for Social Security. While there were still 93 health insurance companies in Germany at the beginning of 2026, their number could fall to below 90 in 2027. Most recently, the two guild health insurance companies had IKK Berlin Brandenburg and IKK healthy plus announced their merger. This should take place in October of this year. The BKK Pfalz and the mkk are also planning a merger.

However, a planned merger between Salus BKK and BIG Direktgesundheit will not come about. Both health insurance companies announced at the beginning of May that not wanting to continue pursuing their cooperation agreement concluded in 2025.