Independent Swiss insurance advisor — what it means.

In Swiss law, an independent insurance advisor is a person registered with FINMA under the Insurance Supervision Act (Article 45 VAG) who has no exclusive ties to any insurer. The advisor reads the contracts, runs the calculations, recommends what fits, and discloses how they are paid. That last part is the one most people don’t know exists. We are an independent insurance advisory — registration F01067278 — which means the advisory work is built around the reader, not around any one insurer. This piece is the longer answer to what that means in practice.

The five categories of insurance distribution in Switzerland.

The landscape, laid out plainly. The legal distinctions are real even though all five categories give insurance advice in some form.

The five categories are easy to confuse because they all touch insurance decisions in some way. The legal distinctions are real — and they decide who the advice is structurally serving.

What “independent” means under Swiss law.

Federal-law explainer.

Under the Insurance Supervision Act — Versicherungsaufsichtsgesetz in German, Loi sur la surveillance des assurances in French, abbreviated VAG / LSA — Switzerland regulates two categories of insurance intermediary:

Tied intermediaries — agents who have a binding economic, ownership, or organisational tie to one or more named insurers. The tie is registered in the FINMA public register.

Untied intermediaries — independent advisors who have no such ties. They register separately with FINMA, document their training, carry professional indemnity insurance, and operate under the Article 45 VAG transparency rules.

Both categories are legitimate. Both can give competent advice. The structural difference is who the intermediary’s primary commercial relationship is with — the insurer, or the client. That difference shows up over time in which contract gets recommended, when, and why.

Verification is straightforward: every Swiss insurance intermediary — tied and untied — is searchable in the FINMA public register at finma.ch. We are listed there as F01067278. Anyone offering insurance advice in Switzerland should be findable there; if they are not, that is itself a regulatory question worth pursuing.

The commission disclosure question — Article 45 VAG.

This is the single most differentiating section.

Most Swiss insurance intermediaries — independent and tied — are paid on commission by insurers. This is the standard market structure, not an Expat Savvy peculiarity. The difference is whether and how the intermediary discloses the arrangement to the client.

Independent advisors registered under Article 45 VAG are required to disclose:

• That they receive commission from insurers when a contract is issued
• The general scale of that commission relative to the contract
• Whether they are tied to any insurer (no, in our case)
• The complaints and ombuds process, including the relevant cantonal and federal points of contact

Our full Article 45 VAG disclosure is published at /vag-45/ — that page is regulated copy, kept verbatim under Swiss insurance supervision law, and tells you exactly how we are paid. Read it before booking any consultation with us. Read the equivalent disclosure with any other Swiss insurance intermediary you are considering — they are required to provide one, and any reluctance to point you to it is itself information.

The reader’s consultation is free. The insurer pays the commission when a contract is issued. Where we recommend “stay” instead of “switch” — which is often — no commission is generated on that recommendation. We say it anyway, because it is the truth that the reader needs.

What an independent advisor actually does.

The “what we do” section. The work is undramatic, which is part of the point.

Across these four work areas, the post we publish on this site is the spec; the consultation is where the spec gets applied to your situation. Both are free; the consultation is forty-five minutes longer.

The four traps — what advisor work actually catches.

The four traps are the canonical evidence of advisor work. Other posts on the site reference them topic by topic; this is the explicit reference.

The longer reference on each trap — federal-law foundation, the typical misunderstanding, the cost, what we do — sits in the four-traps deep dive.

1. The age-curve trap. Cheap supplementary at 32 becomes expensive at 55, and the underwriting cliff means you cannot easily move once a condition is on the record. The advisor models the curve, not the sticker price. Detailed mechanics live in our hospital supplementary deep-dive and the pre-existing-conditions piece.
2. The 3-month deadline. New residents face a federal-law registration window for basic insurance under Article 3 KVG. Miss it, and the canton assigns coverage with a penalty surcharge. The advisor calendars this; the reader rarely does because the rule is buried in the registration paperwork.
3. Coverage that pays vs coverage that fights. The brochure language and the claim-handling reality are different documents. The advisor reads both — and treats the second as the more important one.
4. We match coverage to your life. The right architecture changes with each life event — first job, marriage, baby, canton move, self-employment, retirement, leaving Switzerland. Every transition is a moment to revisit. The advisor flags the calendar; the reader brings the life.

We catch these every week. Not because we are cleverer than the reader — because reading every Swiss insurance contract is what we do for a living, and it is not what most readers do for theirs.

When you do not need an advisor.

Counter-intuitive section, on-brand. Restraint is the advisor difference; the post says no when no is the right answer.

• You’re a long-term Swiss resident with one insurer relationship since childhood, no supplementary, no chronic conditions, and you’re under 40. Your basic insurance review is largely the Franchise question; you can do it on priminfo.ch in twenty minutes. Save us both the call.
• You hold supplementary outpatient that’s working and you are not considering a switch. Stay. Don’t book a consultation just to confirm staying — read our cancellation-deadline post and act on it directly.
• Your only question is which 3a app to use. Read our VIAC vs frankly vs finpension piece. The architecture is what matters; we’ll happily walk it with you, but if you’ve read that post and your architecture is in place, you don’t strictly need the call.
• You’re a price-shopper for basic insurance only. Comparis is fine for this. We don’t compete on basic-price-shopping; we compete on coverage architecture, and the two are different jobs.

Restraint is the advisor difference. We say no when no is the right answer.

How to choose any Swiss insurance advisor — six questions.

Position-neutral; works as much for picking another advisor as for picking us. Honest tools beat self-promotion.

Any independent Swiss insurance advisor should answer these openly. We do — every one of them is on this site. If we are not the right fit, ask the same questions of the next advisor on your list and pick the one who answers them best.

Who Expat Savvy is, briefly.

The minimum self-introduction. Restraint.

We are an independent insurance advisory in Zürich, FINMA-registered F01067278, in operation since 2017. Three people:

• Robert Kolar — insurance advisor, health insurance specialist, 20+ years in Swiss insurance. Working languages: German, English, and Czech.
• Hans Steiner — Financial Planner IAF & Federal Diploma of Higher Education, specialised in pension, 3rd pillar, life insurance, and cross-border situations. Working languages: German, English, and French.
• Benjamin Amos Wagner — founder. Bridges Swiss financial complexity and the international community. Working languages: German and English.

We work in English with internationals settling in Switzerland — a deliberately narrow brief. We do not serve every demographic, every insurance product, or every canton with equal depth.

When this is genuinely worth running through with us.

Three signals the consultation is the right next step:

• You have a real insurance question — newcomer registration, supplementary review, 3a architecture, a contract you can’t read — and you’ve already read the relevant post on this site
• You want a second opinion on advice you have received from a tied agent or a comparison portal — independent reads are usually most useful as the second pair of eyes
• You’re at a life-event trigger — job change, baby, canton move, self-employment, retirement, leaving Switzerland — and want the architecture review before the change rather than after

The honest answer.

An independent Swiss insurance advisor is a regulatory category, not a marketing claim. The category is defined under VAG, registered with FINMA, and disclosed under Article 45 VAG. The practical difference from a tied agent or a comparison portal is structural — whose interests the work is built around, and what the advisor does when “stay” is the right answer.

We read the Swiss insurance contracts so you don’t have to. The regulated frame, the compensation model, and the four traps are all in this post for the reader who wants to do the work themselves. The first review is free, in English, with Robert or Hans. We say “stay” more often than “switch.” The advisor’s confidence is in being right.