Consumer advocates warn against pension insurance with disability protection

Frankfurt Securing one’s own workforce and making provisions for old age with a single product sounds sensible and convenient for many consumers. Insurers therefore offer pension insurance with integrated occupational disability protection.

“Many young people conclude such products, also because structure sales at universities advertise them vigorously,” said Hartmut Walz, professor of business administration in Ludwigshafen, at a press conference on Tuesday. According to Walz, the intermediaries point to tax advantages, which, however, point to the disadvantages of these by-products usually could not cover.

Consumer advocates have been advising for years to separate insurance and asset accumulation. Together with the Federation of Insured Persons (BdV), Walz has now analyzed as part of a study what is better: saving a pension insurance with integrated occupational disability protection or investing in the capital market and taking out separate occupational disability insurance. The result: the decoupled version is always the better choice in the cases examined.