Basic capacity insurance
Too expensive disability? Stiftung Warentest tests alternatives
Updated on June 22nd, 2025 – 8:19 a.m.Reading time: 2 min.
If the protection of occupational disability insurance is denied, the basic capacity insurance has an option. The Stiftung Warentest has checked 37 tariffs.
In addition to private liability, occupational disability insurance (BU) is one of the most important security. She makes financial compensation if working people can no longer pursue their job due to an accident or illness.
The problem: Protection can be very expensive, especially for people with physically exhausting professions. If you have certain previous illnesses, you may not get it at all. For all of them, a basic capacity insurance can be a good alternative, advises the magazine “Stiftung Warentest Finance” (7/2025).
The basic capacity insurance promises an agreed pension if insured persons lose certain basic skills – such as seeing, walking, speaking, operating keyboard or driving. Whether the traditional profession can still be carried out or not does not matter.
The basic capacity insurance is usually cheaper, but also not quite as powerful as a BU, according to the goods testers. Protection on mental illness often has to be completed.
The Stiftung Warentest examined 37 such insurance from 19 different providers. She wanted to find out how good the policies are and how much they cost for an employed 25-year-old person if a monthly pension of 1,500 euros is to flow in the event of damage. The testers have oriented themselves to professional groups that conclude such a policy comparatively often: educators, mechatronics engineers, nursing staff and professional drivers.
The result: 20 of the examined tariffs offer a high or very high level of performance, 17 only a medium or low.
The cheapest among the good tariffs (with protection of mental illnesses) are called Hannoversche basic insurance Premium (861 euros a year), Baloise bronze (883 euros), R+V basic insurance premium (927 euros) and Allianz body protection policy (992 euros). The most expensive tariffs in the test cost up to 1,519 euros a year.
