In the UK, homeowners are required to insure their property, and people will often have contents insurance.
In Germany they think you're mad for not having personal liability insurance (Haftpflichtversicherung). Most Germans have some form of this insurance.
First, does anyone know why this is the case in Germany? Is Germany a particularly litigious culture?
Second, do other European countries have a similar situation?
I'm trying to gain some insight into why liability insurance is so important to Germans. Have they fallen for a con? Or something else?
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I had no idea about this insurance when I first came to Germany, and had an incident where I would have been in pretty big trouble, had the grad school I was registered to not insured all foreign students per default. Since then, I have had it and I am never doing without. The fright I had is enough to last me a lifetime.
In Turkey, nobody has it and noone has even heard of it, I am sure.
In the UK, contents insurance pretty much by default includes £2M (sometimes £5M or £1M) of personal liability insurance.
I’ve not found any standard widely available consumer policies that don’t in the 20+ I’ve previously reviewed.
So it’s extremely prevalent in the UK, but almost no-one actually knows they have it.
Yes, Germany is a more litigious country and it is wise to have personal liability insurance. It’s not actually that expensive. For the whole family with 3 Million Euro cover and no personal contribution the premium is about 55 Euros per year.
Yeah in Germany virtually everyone has it. So it’s expected to pay for any damages you cause, which means if you don’t people will sue you (or their own liability insurance will first cover the damages and then sue you, because that’s a pretty common extra to have). So you’d be insane not to have it. I’m curious how other countries do this? Is there a lower expectation to pay for damages? Or do you just pay everything out of pocket/are completely fucked if you cause major damages?
I’d say in the Netherlands nearly everyone has it. It is cheap and can save you so much trouble.
In Spain you are only required to have home insurance if you have a mortgage. I’ve never heard about personal liability insurance though
It’s a pretty common element in insurance packages here. A typical example could be home/property insurance, health/accidents insurance, liability insurance. Some companies have the first and last of those just lumped together as one item
Germans are Germans, they get three types of insurance before trying to cook a new recipe.
But yeah, highly common in Sweden as well, just not as a separate policy. Most people here have what we call home insurance, which is typically a package of several insurances. Insurance for you as a renter or property owner, depending on your living arrangements, a basic travel insurance, personal liability insurance and a few other things. It’s not mandatory by law to have home insurance but it’s something almost everyone has, it’s pretty cheap and combines many useful policies. Also many landlords and housing associations require you to have it.
The actual personal liability insurance part is something many people probably don’t even know that they have. It’s just not common to cause any damage, in your private capacity, that would require paying damages. By far the most likely way to cause damages is in traffic, but that’d be on your car insurance.
In Spain every car owner is legally mandated to have liability insurance for damages their cat might cause. Home insurance always or almost always comes with liability, but it’s not mandatory to have. Certain dog breeds also have mandatory liability insurance. I have never heard of *personal* liability insurance, though. My “personal liability insurance” is being a good citizen and not causing damages on people or properties, I guess?
In Poland I do have home liability insurance but it’s associated with my home, not my person. Like if a guest trips on my wet kitten floor and breaks a leg, things like that.
Civil liability insurance? Relatively common as it’s very often a requirement to rent a flat and it is relatively cheap.
>First, does anyone know why this is the case in Germany?
In life, you will inevitably break things and, for the reason that you did so, you will be liable for it.
It’s unexpectedly easy to break things which outcost your income, like running over the pump at the gasstation, which costs about an annual salary + cleanup, to give you an example or being stuck on a level crossing with your car – which you will be liable to pay for the accident, etc.
>Is Germany a particularly litigious culture?
It depends on how you view it. German culture is centered around standing by your words and actions and it is generally expected to make up for damages you cause. The German law about liability for damages you cause is quite strict, too, so you can’t really get out of it, but instead you will live at the unemployment pay level of income and work off your debt taken up by breaking something expensive.
The only way to not ruin your life with a bit of bad luck therefore is a personal liability insurance.
For this reason, Germans expect you to have liability insurance and act accordingly if you break their things.
>I’m trying to gain some insight into why liability insurance is so important to Germans.
Peace of mind for a case which will definitely happen in your life.
>Have they fallen for a con?
No, it’s not expensive (roughly the price of one delivery meal annually) and it gives you control about how much and when you pay for your unlucky moments.
>Or something else?
Cheap convenience and the safety from being hit with an enormous bill at an inopportune moment.
It’s essentially the same as a big company fleet of vehicles can do with accidents: They will always cost roughly this share of turnover, as people statistically cause accidents at a relatively constant rate with a relatively constant average cost per accident. You will never know when it hits your car individually and how much it will be, but you can tell that you will have about 7-8 accidents in a career of driving 40’000 km a year for 45 years, of which about one will hurt someone and they will on average cost 12’113,40€.
So you can either choose to be surprised when you have an accident and the huge bill for it incoming, or you just pay a bit over 0,05€ per km for the accidents you will eventually have on average as a “driving expense” to an insurance. Germans overwhelmingly choose the latter as an approach to life: Pay a fixed price upfront and let someone else solve the problem of the individual misfortune, so that it doesn’t hit you personally.
Looks like I have one as part of the home owner’s insurance that covers anyone living with me.
14 € / year, pays up to 170 k€ with 170 € deductible.
Often trade unions have insurance for their members that cover incidents that occur during work.
HAFTPFLICHT Versicherung means it’s mandatory. You have to have it if you rent a flat or anything.
In the Netherlands a basic liability insurance is required by law if you own a motor vehicle.
> [WA third-party liability insurance is mandatory in the Netherlands, the minimum level of vehicle insurance that is required for any person who owns a vehicle.](https://www.wa.nl/en/)
Insurances beyond that are reasonably common I think, but not everyone has it.