Short Answer
Since March 2022, German consumer law forces gyms, phone providers, and streaming services to let you cancel monthly after the initial contract term. Insurance contracts were explicitly exempted from that reform — they still renew automatically for a full year if you miss the cancellation window.
What Most Expats Don't Realize
You cancelled your gym membership and your mobile contract with one month's notice in 2026 and reasonably assumed the same modern consumer rules covered your supplementary insurance policy. The customer portal informed you that the policy had already renewed for another twelve months because insurance termination notices were due three months before expiry. You lost €480 in unrecoverable premiums for a product you no longer wanted, because the one contract category you assumed was modernized never was.
What To Do
- List every insurance policy you hold next to its individual cancellation deadline ("Kündigungsfrist") in your calendar.
- Send a precautionary cancellation by registered mail immediately after signing any policy you are unsure about.
- "Hiermit kündige ich meinen Vertrag vorsorglich zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt." (I hereby cancel my contract as a precaution at the earliest possible date.) — Write this exact phrase to block the automatic extension without ending your current coverage early.
The Truth
Germany modernized cancellation rules for every subscription in the country except the ones sold by insurers. Insurance contracts answer to their own statute, which quietly preserves the twelve-month renewal trap that the rest of consumer law abolished in 2022.