Car sharing and insurance in Switzerland

Car sharing is, in principle, built on trust between two people who know each other. Still, to drive with peace of mind and be ready for anything, it helps to know who is responsible for what in the event of an accident. That is where insurance, claims, deductibles and civil liability come in.

This article covers Swiss law and Swiss insurance practice: the Road Traffic Act (LCR/SVG), the Insurance Contract Act (LCA/VVG), the Code of Obligations, and the general terms of insurers active on the Swiss market (the official texts are published in French, German and Italian). The rules are different in neighbouring countries.

Read this first. Insurance rules depend on your company, your contract and your situation: no two policies are quite alike. This article is updated regularly (last update: August 2026), but insurers’ terms and the regulations change too. Treat it as a guide for asking the right questions, never as a guarantee of cover. Before lending or sharing your vehicle, check your own situation directly with your insurer, ideally in writing.

How do you insure a vehicle against damage?

Damage to your own car is covered by what Swiss insurers call casco cover. It covers your vehicle only (so not the other party’s vehicle in an accident). There are two levels: full casco and partial casco. In short:

• Partial casco covers damage for which nobody behind the wheel is at fault: theft, vandalism, storms and natural events, collision with an animal, or broken glass. For second-hand vehicles more than five years old, partial casco is often the better value.
• Full casco also covers damage caused by the person driving (for example if you hit a post). It is recommended above all for new or expensive cars, and for inexperienced drivers. If your car is leased, the leasing company generally requires full casco for the whole term of the contract.

Neither cover is compulsory. Without them, however, nobody will pay the repair bill in the situations above.

I own a vehicle and I have an accident involving another vehicle: who pays for the damage?

In this case, the vehicle’s third-party liability insurance covers the cost of the damage caused to the other vehicle. Broadly, it covers damage your car causes to people (for instance if you hit a pedestrian), animals or property (if you scrape another vehicle while manoeuvring). For the insurer, it makes no difference who was driving at the time of the accident: what is insured is the vehicle registered with the cantonal road traffic office, not the person at the wheel. The law puts it this way: the keeper of the vehicle is civilly liable for damage caused by its operation, and answers for the fault of the person driving as for their own fault (art. 58 LCR). The injured party may also bring a claim directly against the insurer (art. 65 LCR). Swiss policies generally provide very high sums insured, often in the order of 100 million francs per event.

The premium depends on:

• the vehicle model
• how the vehicle is used
• personal criteria such as the age and experience of the people who drive it
• the number of claims caused in the years before the contract was signed

Third-party liability cover is compulsory and prescribed by the Road Traffic Act (art. 63 LCR).

I am the keeper of a vehicle: am I allowed to lend it to someone else?

Yes. You are entirely free to lend your vehicle to a third party, without prior authorisation from your insurer, whatever your relationship with that person. Your vehicle’s liability cover protects the victims of any accident, whether or not you are at the wheel. When you lend your car, you lend the insurance attached to it as well.

Three points, all drawn from the law, are worth knowing before you hand over the keys:

Always check the licence. Handing a vehicle to someone you know, or ought to know, does not hold the required driving licence is a criminal offence on the part of the keeper (art. 95 para. 1 let. e LCR). Lending to someone without a valid licence therefore exposes you personally to prosecution, on top of the insurance complications. Check the category too: it matters for a motorhome or a heavy van.

A very regular loan can make the other person the vehicle’s keeper. In the eyes of the law, the keeper is not necessarily the person named on the registration document: it is whoever effectively disposes of the vehicle and uses it at their own expense (art. 78 OAC, as clarified by the Federal Supreme Court in ATF 129 III 102). If the person you lend to ends up using the car freely and bearing its costs, talk to your insurer.

For a trip abroad, prepare a written power of attorney. Swiss liability cover remains valid in the countries covered by the international insurance card, and FEDRO recommends, as relayed by La Mobilière (in French), carrying a power of attorney signed by the keeper. As for leased vehicles, occasional private lending is generally not an insurance problem; renting the car out for money, on the other hand, is usually prohibited by the leasing contract itself.

Occasional or regular lending: what changes when there is a claim?

The definition of occasional lending is vague and varies from one insurer to the next, so it is worth asking. Above all, two perspectives need to be kept apart, because they are often confused.

On the vehicle side (the person lending). Your insurer calculates your premium based on the people who actually use the vehicle: the most frequent driver, the circle of drivers, the presence of anyone under 25. Application questionnaires almost always ask who drives the vehicle most often, and that answer is binding. So if lending becomes regular, the person must be declared as a “regular driver” or “additional driver”, usually through a simple endorsement. In both situations, occasional loan or declared driver, the person at the wheel generally benefits from the same vehicle cover as the main driver; a higher deductible may still apply, for instance if the person driving is under 25 at the time of the claim.

Omitting that declaration amounts to a breach of the duty of disclosure under the Insurance Contract Act (art. 4 and 6 LCA): if the insurer discovers that an answer in its questionnaire was inaccurate or incomplete, it may terminate the contract within four weeks of discovering the breach and reduce or refuse its benefits for any damage influenced by the undisclosed fact. Regular use that was never declared can therefore become very expensive at exactly the moment the insurance should step in.

On the borrowing side (the person driving someone else’s vehicle). This is where the well-known day limits come in: they define how far private liability cover extends to journeys at the wheel of someone else’s vehicle, in the basic cover or through an extension depending on the company (see below), and each company sets its own. There is no universal threshold:

Insurer	Limit of third-party driver cover	Notes
Helvetia	6 days per year maximum in the basic private liability cover	beyond that, paid “driving third-party vehicles” extension
Zurich	up to 25 days per calendar year	same household excluded regardless of frequency
La Mobilière	up to 35 days per calendar year	included in the basic private liability cover
Allianz	basic cover limited to one-off use; Premium variant with no day limit	Premium from around CHF 30 per year
AXA	no published day limit, but durable sharing of the same vehicle is excluded	rental and car subscription fall under separate products

Terms published by the insurers, consulted in August 2026; the exact thresholds appear in each company’s general terms in force and may change. Note: Helvetia and Baloise merged in December 2025; existing contracts keep their original terms, though future harmonisation remains likely.

The gap between 6 and 35 days illustrates the essential point: only your own contracts count. Any claim along the lines of “under X days you do not need to declare anything” is false unless it quotes your own policy.

Does adding a second driver increase my premium?

It depends on your insurer and on the profile of the person named. Some companies charge nothing for adding an extra person, while others review their driving history. A novice driver, with less than three years of licence or under 25, can lead to a sharper premium increase and to a higher deductible in the event of a claim. Practices genuinely differ from one company to another: Vaudoise, for instance, applies an additional deductible of 1,000 francs when the person driving is under 25, but waives it when that person is listed in the contract as a regular driver. Adding a driver is usually a simple endorsement, a quick step given the security it brings.

We bought a vehicle together: can we both be named on the insurance contract?

Most insurers do not allow two policyholders on the same motor policy, and the registration document names only one responsible keeper anyway, even where there is joint keepership (art. 78 OAC). For a joint purchase, you therefore need to determine who will use the vehicle most often, and name that person as main driver and policyholder.

The person using the vehicle less regularly is named as an additional driver, under the conditions set by the insurer. The main driver remains the insurer’s point of contact: they are responsible for paying the premium and reporting claims, regardless of who caused the claim. How you split the costs between you is a private arrangement.

The borrower has an accident with another vehicle while driving my car: who pays?

They are not at fault:

• The other party’s vehicle liability insurance covers the repairs.
• It has no effect on your bonus (premium level).

They are at fault:

Damage to the third-party vehicle:

• It is covered by your vehicle’s liability insurance.

Damage to your own vehicle:

• Your insurance covers the damage exactly as if you had been at the wheel yourself, because when you lend your vehicle you also lend the insurance attached to it. In other words, with full casco, damage to your own vehicle is covered. With partial casco only, the cost is yours to bear.
• Even with full casco, you still owe the deductible and the higher premium that comes with being moved down the bonus scale. These amounts may be picked up if the borrower has taken out the “driving third-party vehicles” extension to their private liability cover (see the dedicated section below).

What about gross negligence? If the accident results from driving under the influence, unfitness to drive, or a speeding offence qualifying as a serious traffic offence, the liability insurer first compensates the injured parties, then exercises a right of recourse against the person at fault, as the law requires in these situations (art. 65 para. 3 LCR, in the version in force since 1 October 2023). The Federal Supreme Court established long ago that this recourse targets the person who was at fault at the wheel, not the keeper who lent the vehicle without any fault of their own (ATF 91 II 226).

Do clarify whether the person borrowing your vehicle drives it occasionally or regularly before lending it, so as to avoid any reduction of benefits (see: Occasional or regular lending: what changes when there is a claim?).

What is the “driving third-party vehicles” extension to private liability cover?

It is an extension of private liability cover, often built into household insurance, that provides financial security on journeys made in a vehicle that is not yours. It is commonly called third-party driver insurance. It usually covers:

• damage caused to the borrowed vehicle (in full or in part), if its owner only holds partial casco;
• the deductible of the owner’s insurance when the damage is covered by full casco;
• the owner’s premium increase or loss of bonus after a claim;
• certain claims against the person at the wheel that the vehicle’s liability cover would not meet.

Look closely at this extension, because it is only valid for occasional loans, according to each company’s own thresholds (see the comparison table above).

In principle, the extension does not cover:

• rental and car-sharing-fleet vehicles (separate products apply);
• the vehicle of someone living in the same household as you, whatever the frequency of use;
• durable use of the same vehicle (explicitly excluded at AXA, for example);
• vehicles used for work journeys (the employer’s insurance applies instead).

In the event of a claim, the borrower still has to pay the deductible of the third-party driver cover, often in the order of 500 francs, sometimes expressed as a percentage of the damage.

What about the deductible and the loss of bonus after a claim?

With most casco policies, settling a claim triggers a deductible. That is the amount left to your charge. It is set in the policy, applies per insured claim, and can vary depending on who you lend your car to: for a young driver or someone who has only recently passed their test, the deductible is frequently increased.

As a rule, the lower the premium, the higher the deductible (and vice versa), and you decide the amount when signing the contract.

Then, any at-fault claim generally moves your premium level down the bonus scale (unless bonus protection has been taken out): your premium rises the following year. An important point in a lending context: both consequences, the deductible and the downgrade, hit the vehicle’s contract, and therefore the person who lent the car, even though they were not driving. That imbalance is exactly what the borrower’s third-party driver cover is designed to correct.

Sharing vehicle costs: still a loan, or already a rental?

This is the question that really arises in car sharing between people who know each other: once the borrower reimburses fuel, a share of the insurance or a contribution to maintenance, does the loan become a rental in the eyes of the insurer?

Swiss law distinguishes two contracts. A loan for use (art. 305 CO) is gratuitous by nature: the use of an object is granted without consideration. A lease (art. 253 CO) presupposes rent. The Code of Obligations also expressly provides that the borrower bears the ordinary maintenance costs of the borrowed object (art. 307 para. 1 CO), and it is generally accepted that a contribution to costs does not deprive a loan of its gratuitous character. Sharing that is limited to reimbursing the vehicle’s real costs, with no profit for the person lending it, therefore remains, in principle, within the logic of a loan.

On the insurance side, however, general terms clearly exclude paid rental: Baloise’s terms, for example, exclude renting out the vehicle for money, whether privately or commercially. That is precisely why Swiss peer-to-peer rental platforms such as 2EM provide dedicated insurance that replaces the owner’s cover for the duration of each rental: a standard policy does not cover that activity.

Between these two clear situations, the covered gratuitous loan on one side and the excluded commercial rental on the other, sharing real costs between people who know each other sits in a zone that, to our knowledge, no insurer, industry association or private-insurance ombudsman has settled publicly to date. Our recommendation is therefore simple: describe your arrangement to your insurer (who drives, how often, reimbursement of real costs with no profit) and ask for written confirmation of your cover. Many sharing arrangements between people who know each other can be settled with a simple endorsement naming the drivers. On the amounts to ask for, our article on how much to charge per kilometer gives the Swiss benchmarks and the line not to cross to stay within cost sharing.

In every case, document the usage: knowing exactly who drove, when and for how many kilometres simplifies any claim report and any discussion with the insurer. That is the role of a timestamped logbook shared between the members of the circle, like the one Co-oto provides, which links every trip to the person who was driving. To dig deeper, see our article on the trip logbook.

In summary

If you regularly lend your vehicle as part of private car sharing, discuss the arrangement with your insurer, because every company offers different formulas and some have solutions designed for private car sharing.

For regular lending, it is better to add an additional driver through an endorsement to your contract. It may mean a higher premium, but you remove the risk of having a benefit reduced or refused for inaccurate disclosure. If your arrangement involves reimbursing costs, clarify that point in writing at the same time.

If one of the drivers causes an accident, the great majority of the repair costs on your own vehicle are covered, minus the deductible, provided you hold full casco.

An extension of cover (third-party driver insurance) in the borrower’s private liability policy is recommended for occasional lending.

For regular private car sharing, a proactive approach helps prevent disputes and ensures a shared understanding of responsibilities. We recommend setting out claim arrangements in a car-sharing agreement (who pays the deductible, who bears the loss of bonus) and keeping an up-to-date logbook of trips.

Other options exist, such as asking the borrower for a deposit, securing compliance with the terms of the agreement. In case of disagreement, you can also turn to an independent vehicle expert (in Switzerland: www.aseai.ch).

Summary table

Situation	Cover required
Nobody is driving
The vehicle is found damaged	Partial casco
The owner is driving their own vehicle
Hail, collision with an animal, etc.	Partial casco
At-fault accident with a third-party car (damage to my vehicle)	Full casco
At-fault damage to the third-party car	Vehicle liability insurance
The borrower is driving and is at fault
Repairing damage to the owner’s vehicle	Full casco (failing that: the borrower’s third-party driver cover, if its conditions are met)
Damage to the third-party car	Vehicle liability insurance
Payment of the deductible (occasional loan)	Borrower’s third-party driver cover
Protecting the owner’s bonus (occasional loan)	Borrower’s third-party driver cover

Sources and further reading

Legal texts (fedlex.admin.ch, versions in force; official texts in French, German and Italian): Road Traffic Act (LCR/SVG, SR 741.01), notably art. 58, 63, 65 and 95; Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic (OAC/VZV, SR 741.51), art. 78; Code of Obligations, art. 253 and 305 to 307; Insurance Contract Act (LCA/VVG), art. 4 and 6.

Case law and doctrine: ATF 91 II 226; ATF 129 III 102; “Qualité(s) de détenteur selon la LCR”, document of the Confederation’s recourse service (regress.admin.ch, 2013).

Guides and articles (consulted in August 2026): “Properly insured at the wheel of a borrowed vehicle”, La Mobilière (in French); “Borrowed car: how to be insured”, Zurich; TCS, per-kilometre costs.

Companies offering third-party driver cover in Switzerland

• Helvetia
• Zurich
• La Mobilière
• Allianz
• AXA
• Elvia

More on car sharing in Switzerland

• Car sharing, rental, ridesharing: what’s the difference?
• The car-sharing guide
• Private car sharing without misunderstandings

A reminder: this article is an information guide, not insurance advice. Every situation is specific; if in doubt, your insurer remains your point of reference.