Since I will be getting a new car, and sold my old one, I sat down with a few insurance providers to get offers on insurances. I come from a country where insurance changes are always relatively painless, and there is no minimum contract length to adhere to. Since moving to Switzerland, my insurances started to become a tangled mess, and I just wanted everything streamlined.
I have now chosen the insurance provider, and for my travel, liability, household, legal insurance, as well as my “new” car insurance, it’s fairly straight forward. But I am only 1.5 years into my contract with my other car insurance, and I can only change it after a total of 3 years.
Here comes the thing - the insurance guy will pick up my fahrzeugausweiss and license plates tomorrow to deregister the car, after which the insurance of the car will be cancelled, and he will then register it in the new insurance the day after. (NB it’s a leasing, so he can’t just register the car in his name).
That seems so weird and stupid, can you really just change your car insurance by doing this trick? If yes, I think more people should use it to get a better insurance, and change more often.
Yes, but why is this stupid?
Selling your car is hardly a trivial loophole.
The loop is for my 2nd car, the one I am not selling.
So by deregistering it, and registering it back into my own name the day after, just cancels the insurance? Although I am keeping the car?
Then I think no, you can't do that as you are not actually selling it?
The easiest way to avoid this is to not sign a multi-year contract in the first place of course.
Careful, you risk paying double if the old insurance finds out.
No, but you CAN sell it to your spouse.
BTDT.
My wife sold me hers, and I added it to my plate/insurance, as I rarely used my car back then, as I walked to work, and have five motorcycles.
Tom
Car registration is not linked to owner ship. You can transfer ownership, but keep registration in your name, or you can change registration but keep ownership. As it is apperealty a leased car, you are anyway not the owner.
For the "trick": Usually it is advised to register the car for some period in someone else's name. Realy, really, read the fine print of your current contract.
2 ways to do it easy:
1. Re-register the car to spouse/family/friend/whoever, and then back again to yourself if you'd like. Obviously not easy if the car is leased. Done that a couple of times.
2. If you have multiple cars, going from standalone plate to Wechselschilder (or the other way around), you can do anything you want with insurance providers as well. Done that a couple of times as well.
There is also the solution of having a claim and then changing your insurance, but that comes at the cost of actually claiming something so I wouldn't consider it an easy way.
I think I did the dodge of changing the registration of a car to my wife's name in order to change insurance. Perfectly legal and nothing the old insurance can do anything about.