Yes. An insurer can accept your application for supplementary insurance while excluding a specific condition or benefit — this is what is called a reservation. What is more surprising is how little the law says about it, and where the guarantees attributed to it actually come from.
What the law requires, and what it leaves open
One central rule, in Article 33.
Article 33 of the federal law on insurance contracts (VVG/LCA) provides that the insurer is liable for all events that have the character of the insured risk, unless the contract excludes certain events “in a precise, unequivocal manner”. In practice: an exclusion that does not meet this condition does not do its job, and the insurer cannot rely on it. It is up to the insurer to define precisely what it does not insure.
This does not mean that the slightest doubt means you win. The clause must genuinely be open to more than one reading, and an ordinary reading of the contract must not be enough to settle it; only then does the lack of precision work in the insured person's favour.
Beyond this requirement of precision, the text is silent. No definition of a reservation, no maximum duration, no duty to state its start, its end and the condition concerned. Note also that Article 33 appears neither among the absolutely mandatory provisions of the VVG/LCA, nor among those that cannot be altered to the detriment of the policyholder.
A reservation therefore remains a contractual condition, permitted by the freedom of contract the insurer enjoys on the supplementary side — but it must be written clearly.
The five-year rule concerns a different insurance
You often read that a reservation lapses after five years at the latest, and that it must state in writing its start, its end and the illness concerned. These guarantees do exist — in Article 69 of the KVG/LAMal, which governs optional daily sickness allowance insurance. The same article also allows the insured person to prove, before the expiry date, that the reservation is no longer justified.
What separates the two situations is not the product's name: the VVG/LCA also has collective daily sickness allowance insurance. It is the law under which the contract is concluded. These guarantees belong to the KVG/LAMal regime and do not follow your supplementary insurance. Carrying them over from one regime to the other is the most widespread mistake on the subject, and it is always made in the reassuring direction.
What decides instead
Your contract documents, and they alone. Four points are worth checking before signing, because none of them is guaranteed by law:
- is the excluded condition or benefit named precisely, as Article 33 requires, or described in broad terms?
- does the reservation carry an end date, or is it open-ended?
- is there a procedure for asking for it to be lifted, and on what terms?
- does the reservation appear in the policy itself or only in a letter of acceptance?
Switching insurer does not erase it
A new insurer starts the assessment from scratch, with its own questionnaire and its own policy. Nothing obliges it to accept you, and nothing obliges it to accept you without a reservation. The condition that prompted the first exclusion will be visible in the new file.
A reservation is therefore not a problem you get out of by switching insurer. It is one more reason to know exactly what yours says before doing anything at all.