Persian-speaking Consultants

Persian-speaking advisers in Germany, in the two fields this list is actually made of: Insurance brokers and Financial advisors. These are the contracts people sign quickly in their first year in Germany, without fully understanding them, and then live with for ten or twenty years. That is why a shared language here is not merely convenient. The decision is long-term, and undoing it is expensive.

What the Verified badge does and does not say

Verified says one thing only: a real person stands behind this profile and manages it themselves. YabInfy does not check anyone's certificates, licences, experience or competence, and the badge is not for sale. In this field you can check for yourself: every insurance intermediary in Germany must hold a licence and be entered in the public intermediary register kept by the chambers of commerce. Ask for their registration number and the type of licence they hold, and look it up there.

First ask who is paying for the advice

Before any question about a product, this is the one that matters. There are three roles, their names look alike, and their interests are not the same:

• Insurance broker (Versicherungsmakler): legally acts for you, works with many insurers, and takes commission from whichever company the contract is placed with.
• Insurance agent (Versicherungsvertreter): represents one company or a few named ones and sells their products. That is not a bad thing, but the range of choice is limited and you should know it.
• Fee-based adviser (Versicherungsberater or Honorarberater): is paid by you and takes no commission.

None of the three is inherently better, but once you know where the person's income comes from, you can weigh their recommendation properly. Ask it plainly: do you work on commission or on a fee?

Which insurances are compulsory, and which are not

• Health insurance is compulsory for everyone in Germany, statutory or private, and nursing care insurance comes with it.
• Motor third-party liability is compulsory for any vehicle that carries a plate.
• Personal liability (Privathaftpflicht) is not compulsory, and almost everyone in Germany has it anyway. The reason is that if you injure someone or damage their property, your liability is not capped at some convenient figure. The premium is usually small, which is what makes it the first contract most advisers will raise.
• Occupational disability, contents and legal expenses insurance are optional and depend on your situation: your job, whether you rent or own, and how much risk you could absorb yourself.

Let the adviser explain which of these applies to you and which does not. An adviser who says "that one is not for you" is usually more trustworthy than one who has a recommendation for everything.

Ask for these in writing before you sign

• The product information sheet (Produktinformationsblatt) and the full contract terms.
• The consultation record (Beratungsprotokoll): the adviser is required to document the advice given. Take a copy and keep it.
• Costs, itemised: the cost of setting up the contract, the annual cost, and what share of your payments in the early years goes on costs.
• What happens if I stop paying: ask for the surrender value in year three and year five, as a number. That one answer separates a good contract from a bad one more clearly than any projection of returns.
• The right of withdrawal: most insurance contracts can be withdrawn from after signing, usually within fourteen days and thirty for life and pension policies. The exact period is stated in your own contract, so find it on day one and write the date down.

Do not sign in the meeting itself. If you are told the offer is valid "only until tonight", that sentence alone is reason enough to wait.

Pensions, and the years you worked in another country

A large part of financial advice in Germany is about retirement: contributions to the state pension, workplace schemes, and private contracts. If you worked somewhere before coming to Germany, ask what becomes of those years. The answer depends on whether a social security agreement exists between that country and Germany, and it differs from country to country. Before buying any private contract, ask the adviser to establish where you currently stand in the state system first.

What these roles are not

An insurance or financial adviser is neither a tax adviser nor a lawyer. Tax matters belong with a Steuerberater, and anything involving a dispute, a complaint, a contested contract or a decision from an authority belongs with a lawyer. Giving professional legal advice in Germany is restricted to people licensed for it, so if your question is a legal one, go to the right door from the start.

Why a Persian-speaking adviser

German insurance contracts are written in precise technical language, and it is the few lines of exclusions that decide whether you are paid on the day something happens. Understanding those lines in a second language, in a meeting where somebody is sitting opposite you waiting for a signature, is genuinely hard. An adviser who speaks Persian can open up those exclusions, and more importantly you can ask "what does that mean" without feeling you are wasting anyone's time.

There is one more thing that comes up often in the Persian-speaking community: these contracts get signed through an acquaintance, on a friend's recommendation. Trust is a good thing and it is not a substitute for asking. Put the questions above to an acquaintance too. A professional adviser will not mind them.

What to ask when you call

• Whether they are an independent broker or an agent for one company, and how many insurers they work with.
• Their registration number and the type of licence they hold.
• Whether their income comes from commission or from a fee.
• Which area they mostly work in: personal cover, motor and home, or pensions and investment.
• Whether meetings are in person, or online as well.
• Whether they also work on contracts you already have, or only sell new ones. Reviewing existing contracts is often worth more than buying another.
• YabInfy checks none of this, so ask for it yourself, and ask to see the document where it matters.

Online or in person

Some of the advisers on this page work online as well, and for this field a video meeting is usually enough, since the real work is reading documents and comparing them. Use the Online filter to see who works remotely, and if you would rather have the paperwork on the table in front of you, start from the city list below.

Choosing from this list

In the reviews, look for what can genuinely be judged: whether the explanation was clear, whether the costs were stated up front, and whether the phone was still answered after the signature. That last one matters most in insurance, because the value of a broker becomes apparent on the day you need to make a claim. One more thing: past performance of any product guarantees nothing about the future, and one person's satisfaction with what a contract paid is a poor basis for your decision.

Your privacy holds on this list: YabInfy does not show who viewed a page or who got in touch. Nothing becomes public except a review you write yourself, and you choose the name it appears under. Each profile keeps its contact route behind "Show contact details", and that route reaches the office itself.

There is more about how this site works in the FAQ, and if you advise in this field yourself, add your business.