How long should occupational disability insurance run in Germany?

Guide figures from published tariff examples for a EUR 1,500 monthly benefit, with the state benefit for comparison.

The term should end exactly where your state retirement pension begins. Otherwise you create a hole with no salary and no pension. For anyone born from 1964 that is the 67th birthday; earlier cohorts reach it slightly sooner. Your annual state pension statement (Renteninformation) names the date.

The risk sits at the end of working life, not at the beginning. The average age when occupational disability starts is around 47 to 48, and the cluster reaches into the mid fifties: ages 47 to 55 account for around 36 percent of all claim decisions. Bringing the term forward removes precisely the years you wanted cover for.

The insured period (Versicherungsdauer) says by when the disability must begin for the contract to respond at all. The benefit period (Leistungsdauer) says how long money is then paid. Offers often show a single final age, which hides the difference.

Some tariffs deliberately combine an insured period to 60 with a benefit period to 67. That is cheaper and honestly built: if you fall ill at 59 you are paid until 67, if you fall ill at 61 you get nothing. The dangerous version is the other way round, a long insured period with a short benefit period. Ask for both figures in writing.

The table starts from the documented guide figure of around EUR 70 for a EUR 1,500 benefit to age 67 in an office job, and from the published rule that each year cut saves about 5 to 10 percent.

The pattern is clear: a lot of cover costs little, and giving it up gets expensive fast. The last seven years are cheap to insure because their cost is spread across the whole term.

Round numbers: insuring to 62 instead of 67 from age 30 cuts the premium by roughly 20 to 30 percent. On EUR 70 that is EUR 14 to 21 a month, so about EUR 5,400 to 8,100 over 32 years of payments.

Against that stands the claim. If disability begins at 61, five years of benefit are missing. At EUR 1,500 a month that is EUR 90,000, at EUR 2,000 it is EUR 120,000. The saving is real money, but it stands against many times its value, and exactly in the phase of life when disability is most likely.

German state pension age has been raised several times in recent decades. If it moves again, your policy ends before your pension starts even though you did everything right. An extension option (Verlängerungsoption) lets you push the final age out without new health questions. That matters, because a fresh health assessment at 55 almost always brings exclusions or a refusal.

Read the wording closely, because the option is narrow: no current or past claim, a final age of at least 65 or 67, a fixed window that is often between 50 and 55, and an extension only to the extent of the statutory change. If it is not in your contract, you cannot rely on it later.

It is defensible when another source reliably pays from that point: a company pension or civil service pension that starts without reductions, or assets that demonstrably carry the years to your state pension. Someone applying at 58 also has a short term by necessity, and that is better than nothing.

It is not defensible as a way to save money. If the premium is too high, cut the benefit and keep the term. EUR 1,200 until 67 protects better than EUR 1,800 until 60, because it pays in the years when claims statistically happen.