I am looking to buy some life insurance - not with investment, just simple term insurance. I have asked a number of people for quote here in Switzerland, and also looked on moneysupermarket.com in the UK...

It seems that to insure against death, with nothing fancy attached costs around 3 times as much here in Switzerland. I even asked one of the agents about this, and more or less got a shrug of the shoulders.

Clearly, I am not 3 times as likely to die in the next 15 years just because I live in Switzerland, so is this just a symptom of a complacent market with no competition? Is there anyone who knows how to get a reasonable deal here? Alternatively, anyone know if a UK or other non-swiss company that will insure Swiss residents?

Thanks
Iain

Welcome to Switzerland. Just about everything is subject to the non-competitive economy here, petrol and bottled water excepted.

I have had life insurance with Norwich Union (now Aviva) in the UK since the late 90s, which has continued to cover me wherever I've lived in the world (three countries since then). As a bit of a bonus (from my perspective), the premiums are fixed (but of course so is the insured amount).

I'd imagine that quite a few insurers would offer global insurance.

Good luck with the insurance, and with buying things here in general!

I took out a life insurance policy here over 20 years ago. At the time it seemed poor in comparison to what was available in the UK, and yes certainly then there was no competition between insurers.

However, thanks to abysmal performance of the pound £terling the policy is now worth more than double what it would have been had it not been in CHFs...

Try for Mayfair worldwide Insurance

OK, this is where I ended up.
Swiss pricing is a ripoff :-) I'm not totally sure if it is "personal", or whether native swiss people get the same outrageous rates. Some sites I found suggest that expats in many countries are charged more for life insurance, but that might be because:

most sites/companies offering "international" (life) insurance, or even catering specifically and "exclusively" for brits abroad in Europe / Suisse appear to charge nearly as much as the local swiss companies I tried. Well, why try harder, I guess? Some companies attempted to explain this huge discrepancy, but werent very convincing ;-)

Eventually, I had a breakthrough - calling Legal and General DIRECTLY, not through an agent, they said they would offer me more or less UK rates, on the following conditions:
1) I am a UK national
2) I have a UK "family" address. My parents were OK
3) the premiums are paid from UK bank account by direct debit
4) At the time of taking out the policy, I intend to return to being a UK resident at some point in the future. There didnt seem to be any specific timescale they required, so I said something that seemed reasonable to me given schooling etc.