Filing a Disability (BU) Claim: Describing Your Job the Right Way

You have paid into your occupational disability insurance (Berufsunfähigkeitsversicherung, BU) for years, and now your health will not let you work. Whether the BU pension is paid depends to a large extent on one document many people underestimate: the description of your job. The insurer wants to know what you did on a normal working day, hour by hour, and which of it you can no longer do. This guide explains when to file, what a good job description looks like, what to sort out with your doctors and the confidentiality release, and what happens after you file. It comes with an AI prompt that helps you write the description in German.

When to file the claim

Under § 172(2) of the German Insurance Contract Act (VVG) you are occupationally disabled if, because of illness, injury or loss of strength, you are expected to be permanently unable to do your last job, fully or in part. Almost all policies make this more specific: they pay from a degree of 50 percent and accept a medical forecast of six months. Many also pay if you have already been at least 50 percent unable to work for six months without a break, backdated to the start of that period.

So do not wait until your sick pay (Krankengeld) runs out. As soon as it is clear that you will be off work for more than a few months, tell the insurer. The review usually takes several months, and some policy conditions limit backdated payments if you report the disability years later. Check your conditions to see what applies to your contract.

You normally keep paying premiums during the review. If the claim is accepted, you get them back for the time since the disability began. If money gets tight, ask for an interest-free deferral for the duration of the review, which many insurers offer. Simply stopping payment is not an option, because the insurer can then cancel the policy under § 38 VVG. How you bridge the time until the first pension payment also depends on your sick pay or daily sickness benefit.

How the insurer measures your claim

The insurer does not look up your diagnosis in a table. It asks which tasks your job actually involved and what share of them you can no longer do. What counts is the job as it was organised while you were healthy. If you had already cut your hours or moved to a lighter role because of the illness, you still describe the work before that change and explain why it happened.

A few more points from your policy conditions matter here:

• Abstract referral (abstrakte Verweisung): Older or cheap policies may refer you to another job you could do with your training and experience, even if you do not actually do it. Good policies waive this.
• Concrete referral (konkrete Verweisung): If you are already working in another job that matches your previous standard of living, the insurer can refer you to it. Income and status of the new job must be comparable to the old one.
• Reorganisation for the self-employed: If you are self-employed, you have to show that you cannot reasonably reorganise your business so that you can keep working. Many policies waive this for small businesses or university graduates.
• Duty to cooperate: The insurer may request documents and have you examined by a doctor of its choice at its own cost. What exactly you have to provide is set out in the section of your conditions on claiming benefits.

Which policy features make the difference when you claim is explained on the page about occupational disability insurance.

The job description: hour by hour

The insurer sends you a questionnaire, usually with a part about your job. There is rarely enough space. Add your own attachment instead: a breakdown of a typical working week while you were healthy. For each task, write down what exactly you did, for how long and how often, in which body position and with what physical strain. The times should add up to your actual working hours, overtime included.

An example for an electrician in customer service, shortened to one day:

• 7:00 to 7:30: Picking material in the warehouse, carrying boxes of up to about 20 kg to the van.
• 7:30 to 8:15: Driving to the first customer, about 30 to 45 minutes per job.
• 8:15 to 11:30: Fault finding and repairs on distribution boards, mostly standing, often overhead or kneeling, work on a ladder.
• 11:30 to 12:00: Break.
• 12:00 to 15:30: Second and third job, laying cables in walls, chiselling channels, connecting appliances.
• 15:30 to 16:30: Driving back, filling in job reports on a tablet, reordering material.

Then describe which of these tasks you can no longer do, or only partly, and why. In this example, after a slipped disc that could be carrying, overhead and kneeling work and longer drives. The job reports might still be possible. If the tasks you can no longer do are the core of the job and cannot sensibly be separated from the rest, the degree can easily be above 50 percent, even if the minutes add up to slightly less.

These are the mistakes I see most often:

• Only the job title: „Office clerk“ says nothing about whether you carry files every day, talk to customers on the phone or sit at a screen for eight hours.
• Copying the official job description: What your employment contract says often differs from your real day. What matters is what you actually did.
• Exaggerating: The insurer asks your employer. If your details do not match, you lose credibility. In the worst case you face an accusation of fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Percentages without a basis: „I am 70 percent disabled“ helps nobody. The insurer works out the degree from your breakdown and the medical reports. Give it the basis for that.
• Forgotten side tasks: Driving, on-call duty, management tasks, shift work and overtime belong in the description if they were regular.

Organising the job description with AI

Writing down a working week in minutes from memory is hard work, and the insurer expects it in German. An AI such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini can turn your notes into a clean breakdown and write it in German for you. The prompt below makes the AI ask about missing details first, work only with your figures and not invent anything. Copy it and add your notes.

You are helping me write a description of my job for a claim under my German occupational disability insurance (Berufsunfähigkeitsversicherung).

My job and position: [e.g. electrician in customer service, employed, full time]
Self-employed or employed, if self-employed the number of employees: [add here]
My notes on a typical working week while I was healthy: [What did I do, when, for how long and how often? Body position, lifting and carrying, driving, screen work, customer contact, management tasks, overtime, shifts]
What I can no longer do or only partly: [describe in general terms, e.g. no lifting over 5 kg, no sitting longer than 30 minutes, no diagnoses]

Follow these rules:
1. First ask me about anything missing for a complete breakdown, for example the duration, frequency or body position of individual tasks. Only write the description once I have answered.
2. Create a table for a typical working week with the columns task, exact description, hours per week, body position and physical strain. The total should match my actual weekly working hours, check the sum below the table.
3. Then state for each task whether I can still do it, only partly or not at all, using the limitation from my notes as the reason.
4. Work only with what I tell you. Do not invent tasks, times or strain, do not exaggerate and do not leave anything out. If times do not add up, point it out to me instead of adjusting them.
5. Do not state a percentage of disability and do not cite laws or court rulings. The insurer makes that assessment.
6. Use placeholders such as [NAME], [EMPLOYER] and [POLICY NUMBER] instead of real data. Do not mention diagnoses, only describe what I can no longer do.
7. Write in the first person, factual and plain, the way a person describes their working day. No set phrases, no filler and no typical AI wording.
8. Do not use dashes (neither en dash nor em dash). Separate thoughts with a comma, a full stop or a new sentence.
9. Write the description in German. Below it, add an English translation so I can check the content.

To make sure the description actually helps you, keep these points in mind:

• No health data in the chat: Do not give the AI diagnoses, medical findings or medication. For the job description it is enough to say what you can no longer do. Add your name, employer and policy number to the finished text yourself.
• Check every number: The insurer compares your details with what your employer says and with your doctors' reports. An estimated figure that is wrong raises questions. Use the English translation to check the German text and correct anything that does not match your real working day.
• Collect evidence: Your employment contract, job description, duty rosters, a mileage log or a confirmation from your employer support your breakdown. If you are self-employed, add details about staff, turnover and who does what.
• Not legal advice: The AI organises your information. It cannot judge whether it is enough for a payout. If a high pension is at stake or the insurer has already raised doubts, get support.

Medical records and the confidentiality release

Besides the job description, the insurer needs medical evidence. Talk to the doctors treating you first. A report that only lists diagnoses does not help much. A better one describes what you can and cannot do physically and mentally, since when, and what the outlook is. Give your doctor your job description for this. You can request copies of your findings and your patient file yourself under Art. 15 GDPR and § 630g BGB, so you know what the insurer will see.

The claim form usually comes with a release from medical confidentiality (Schweigepflichtentbindung). You can sign a general release, but you do not have to. Under § 213(3) VVG you can require the insurer to ask for your consent before each individual request to doctors, hospitals or health insurers. This takes a little longer, but you know exactly who passes on what about you. Do not refuse to cooperate altogether, though: without records the insurer cannot assess the claim and will not pay.

Keep in mind that the insurer also checks whether your health answers were complete when you took out the policy. If gaps come to light, it may withdraw from the contract. The legal limits on that are explained in the guide Insurance claim denied. If you are unsure whether everything was declared correctly back then, talk to a specialist insurance lawyer (Fachanwalt für Versicherungsrecht) before you submit the records.

After you file: review, acceptance, follow-up checks

The insurer only has to pay once it has completed the necessary enquiries (§ 14 VVG). If it asks for documents, send them quickly and in full. If you hear nothing for weeks, ask in writing about the status and which documents are still missing. Keep a record of every question and answer with the date.

At the end the insurer must state in text form whether it accepts the claim (§ 173(1) VVG). It may limit the acceptance in time once and is bound by it until the period ends (§ 173(2) VVG). Be careful with offers that come as an agreement or settlement, such as a one-off payment in exchange for giving up the pension, or a pension for one year only in exchange for your signature. You do not have to accept such offers, and you should never sign them without having them checked.

Even after accepting the claim, the insurer may check regularly whether you are still disabled. If it wants to stop paying, it has to set out the change to you in text form in a way you can follow. It is released from paying at the earliest at the end of the third month after you receive that notice (§ 174 VVG). If the insurer denies the claim or stops the pension, the next steps from appeal to ombudsman are in the guide Insurance claim denied: how to appeal, ombudsman and BaFin.

If your BU policy is managed by me

Then get in touch before you fill in the questionnaire, via WhatsApp, email or the simplr app. As an insurance broker I represent your interests, not the insurer's. I go through your policy conditions with you, look at your job description before it goes out and help you, as far as I can, to submit the claim completely and on time, in English or German. The insurer decides on the payout.

If the insurer refuses, cuts the payout or drags out the review for many months, I can bring in the claims service of Maxpool. Maxpool is the broker pool I work with. Its claims service reviews disputed cases with its own specialists and deals with the insurer with the weight of a large broker pool behind it. Nobody can promise a particular outcome, but you do not face the insurer on your own.

The service only covers policies managed by me, meaning policies you took out through me or transferred into my care. If your BU is still managed elsewhere and you are healthy, now is the right time to transfer it. If you would like to do that, get in touch. The policy itself stays exactly as it is, premium and conditions included.

No BU policy yet? How to get one safely

If you are reading this because a colleague is fighting for their BU pension, you will notice quickly that the claim starts when you sign the contract. Accurate health answers and a policy without abstract referral save you a lot of trouble later. That is why we never send an application blindly, because a rejection is recorded in the insurers' information system (HIS). We go in three steps:

How the anonymous pre-assessment works in detail is explained in the guide on the BU pre-assessment. If a BU policy is not possible, see the alternatives to disability insurance.