What can I do if my BU application was rejected?

What the routes cost and what the alternatives cost. Guide figures for EUR 1,500 monthly benefit until age 67, as of September 2026.

Rejection covers two entirely different situations, and the right route differs. If your application was rejected, the insurer declined you before any contract existed. This is about medical findings, your job and other insurers.

If your claim was rejected, you have a contract and the insurer says the conditions are not met. This is about evidence, deadlines and, if necessary, court. Do not mix them up: applying again after a claim rejection wastes months, and hiring a lawyer after an application rejection buys you nothing.

Ask for the reasons in writing first. Usually one single finding is named, and often it is one you can clear up: a suspected diagnosis never confirmed, a treatment long since completed, an entry that came from billing and never was an illness.

Then obtain a medical report that addresses exactly that point: reason, course, end, current state, prognosis. With that report, make anonymous pre-enquiries elsewhere. Ask explicitly for an exclusion of the one diagnosis instead of a refusal, and for a deferral with a fixed date instead of a final no. Also check the route through your employer: company schemes and group contracts (Kollektivvertrag) often use simplified underwriting.

A rejection, a loading or a deferral is recorded in the insurance industry's information system (Hinweis- und Informationssystem, HIS), which other insurers can query. Applying to one insurer after another collects entries and narrows your own options.

So the rule is: after a rejection, no second application, but an anonymous pre-enquiry (anonyme Risikovoranfrage) through a broker. Your findings go to several underwriters without your name, you collect verdicts and apply only where the verdict works. Once a year you can ask the operator of the file, free of charge, what is stored about you. Do that before you go on.

None of these is as good as a BU. Each covers less, and that has to be said before you sign. Weaker cover is still better than none, especially if your income carries a family.

Check them in this order: basic abilities cover first, then earning capacity cover, then serious illness cover, and accident cover last. Accident cover is the weakest substitute, because most disability cases come from illness, not accidents.

Published analyses of claim reviews show insurers base just under 37 percent of rejections on the required degree of disability not being reached, and almost 15 percent on wrong answers given when the contract started. The notorious referral to another job, together with reorganisation of your work, accounts for under one percent.

Read the rejection letter sentence by sentence. It almost always reveals which piece of evidence the insurer is missing, and that is exactly what you can supply. A rejection is not a judgment, it is an assertion with reasons.

Ask for access to your claim file, including reports and internal notes. Then check whether the insurer applied its own policy wording and whether the letter even names the contractual conditions. Without a reasoned decision, the rejection is open to challenge on form alone.

Three routes follow. Your own medical report costs money but is taken seriously by the courts. A complaint to the insurance ombudsman (Versicherungsombudsmann) is free, admissible up to a value of EUR 100,000 and binding on the insurer up to EUR 10,000. If that does not settle it, sue: analyses put roughly 2.7 percent of claims in court, around two thirds of those cases end in a settlement and insurers lose about 11 percent. Use a lawyer specialising in insurance law (Fachanwalt für Versicherungsrecht) and check legal expenses insurance and legal aid first.

Claim forms, questionnaires and rejection letters come in German, and the German wording is what counts. Have the rejection translated properly before you answer it, and put your own answers in writing rather than settling anything by phone.

Medical reports from abroad usually need a translation before the insurer will accept them. Ask which format it requires, and send everything by a traceable route. If you are living outside Germany, name a German address for service or keep your broker as the contact point, so a letter with a deadline in it does not reach you late.