Three layers to make visible
Risk protection
Check the insured person, event, term, exclusions, health disclosure and contractual benefit. Having no savings value describes a different purpose and is not automatically a defect.
Savings or investment
Identify the vehicle, risks borne by the policyholder, costs, available values and written guarantees. A unit-linked life policy is not the same as holding a fund without insurance.
Illustrative calculations
Read comparable scenarios including an adverse one. Ask which elements are certain under the contract and which vary with markets, costs or bonus allocations.
Questions before comparing offers
Compare the same functions and require written answers for every material difference.
Which need is covered?
Separate family protection, continuity of a project and value building, then locate each need in the policy.
How is each premium used?
Ask how risk, costs and savings are handled without assuming every payment becomes fully recoverable value.
What remains after a change?
Obtain the effects of pausing, reducing, converting or exiting on both protection and value before accepting the term.
Keep dated evidence
Archive the policy, conditions, insurer's written response and federal source consulted so the version underlying a later decision remains traceable.
Shortcuts to avoid
- Savings does not turn a projection into a capital guarantee or a policy into an ordinary investment fund.
- Protection does not prove that death, illness, accident or incapacity is covered as you imagine.
- This article does not choose a risk-only, mixed, unit-linked or other pension solution.
Verified Swiss federal sources
FINMA and FSIO guidance is linked in verified English. Fedlex is intentionally linked to the official French Insurance Contract Act because no authoritative English legal text is asserted here. Official texts, the policy and competent decisions prevail.
- FINMA — Individual life insuranceEnglish · Supervisory framework for individual life insurance, no general approval of rates and specific requirements for surrender values.↗
- FINMA — FINMA examines life insurers' sample calculationsEnglish · Transparency of life-insurance scenarios, separation of projections from guarantees and the importance of costs and adverse outcomes.↗
- Fedlex — Loi fédérale sur le contrat d'assurance (official French text)French fallback · Official French consolidated text covering pre-contractual information, the contract, life-insurance beneficiaries and statutory rights or notices; no authoritative English text is asserted.↗
- OFAS — Invalidity: benefits and contributionsEnglish · Legal concepts of invalidity and incapacity to earn, the different insurance channels involved and their distinct entitlement conditions.↗