When you switch from permanent employment to founding a company, your mental focus is naturally entirely on building the business. But in this exact phase, everything hits you at once: health insurance, pension, unemployment benefits, employers' liability insurance association, GmbH status. This quickly creates a paralyzing feeling of having overlooked something important - or not even being able to tackle the topics at all.
That's why today I am zooming out of the details to give you an overview. The most important rule for your first year of founding is: you don't have to finalise everything on day 1 - but you should have seen the complete map once to set priorities.
Here is your structured overview of all the safety nets that need to be re-established due to the loss of employee status.
1. Acute Priority: Health & Income
This block must and should be sorted out when starting full-time self-employment, as this is where the greatest immediate financial risks lie:
The systemic question (health insurance): Self-employed individuals are generally not subject to compulsory statutory health insurance (GKV). You can actively choose between private (PKV) and voluntary statutory health insurance (GKV) or check whether free family insurance via your partner is still possible, at least for the initial period - depending on what your personal founding journey looks like. PKV offers are calculated based on age and state of health, and your GKV contribution is based on your income. The Techniker Krankenkasse also offers a helpful contribution calculator for the self-employed.
Loss of earnings due to illness (sick pay): The most important blind spot. If you get sick, no employer will continue to pay your salary for 6 weeks. Even if you remain statutorily insured, the sick pay from the statutory health insurance only applies if you actively choose the coverage as an add-on, and just like with employees, only from the 7th week. Depending on how tight or wide your financial buffer is, you can also combine private sick pay insurance and GKV sick pay.
Occupational disability: Protecting your income in the event of long-term, serious illness. The rule here is: get covered as early as possible, because here too, the insurer looks at age and state of health. Not to be confused here either with the reduced-earning-capacity pension of the Statutory Pension Insurance (if you continue to pay in voluntarily): This pays out if you cannot work at all, in any job. An occupational disability insurance pays out if you can no longer carry out your specific profession.
2. Hard Deadlines & Legal Status
There are bureaucratic traps lurking here that are tied to fixed timings:
The 3-month window (unemployment insurance): Business founders can voluntarily continue their insurance with the employment agency. The catch: the application must be submitted within the first three months after starting self-employment.
The GmbH trap (status determination): If you found a GmbH, as a shareholder-managing director you are not automatically exempt from social security. To avoid expensive back-payments, we clarify this via a simple status determination procedure with the German Pension Insurance. This can even be done before the founding, with a so-called forecast decision.
Accident insurance (employers' liability insurance association): Automatic protection against accidents at work no longer applies. Every company must register with the responsible employers' liability insurance association - clarify here whether voluntary membership makes sense for you in the case of solo self-employment or if you prefer to solve it privately. As soon as you have employees, it is a must.
3. Your Strategic Roadmap: Long-Term Provision
These topics do not have to be resolved in the founding month, but belong on the agenda for the first year:
Retirement provision: Your employer no longer pays into the pension fund. Whether statutory pension, professional pension scheme, or subsidized models such as the basic pension (Rürup) - you need a strategy, because an ETF savings plan alone is a shaky retirement provision. You can read more about this in my blog post on ETFs & pension insurance - and the Digital Pension Overview gives a good overview of your entitlements, explained for you here.
Other risks: Depending on your personal situation, we will also include survivor's protection, long-term care insurance, and new property risks on our roadmap.
4. The Operational Level: Business Protection
In parallel with your private protection, the new company itself must be protected against existential risks from the outside. The absolute basics for this are professional indemnity/public liability insurance and, in the case of data-processing business models, protection against cyber risks. Details on which commercial insurances you really need and what can wait can be found in the blog post for insurance in the founding year.
The Next Step
When you see this map for the first time, it seems intimidating. But that is exactly what I am here for, you don't have to navigate this jungle on your own. Let's talk. I will review your situation and together we will define what is an acute priority and what we deliberately postpone until later. We will develop a resilient structure - step by step, entirely without technical jargon and sales pressure.