Health insurance is a legal requirement for almost everyone living in Germany, including people on visas and residence permits. When you apply, your insurance is part of how you show that your stay is financially secure.
That obligation doesn’t end once your permit is issued. Authorities can check again at any time to see if your insurance is still valid, especially when you extend or change your permit.
When you apply for a visa or residence permit, you usually need to show which health insurance you have, when it starts and ends and the level of cover. Based on this, the authorities decide if your health insurance meets the legal requirements. If it does, they can approve your visa or residence permit.
In other words, your permission to stay in Germany is often granted because you have that specific cover in place.
What happens if you cancel before obtaining another insurance
At any given time after the permit is issued, some immigration offices may ask for confirmation that your health insurance has existed continuously, and has not been terminated in between appointments.
This is meant to prevent people from cancelling their insurance to save money and only re-activating it for the next appointment.
If continuous coverage can’t be proven, the authority can refuse or shorten a residence permit.
Feather’s role: what we can share with authorities
If your Feather policy was used for a visa or residence permit application, it’s important to know how we may interact with authorities. If an immigration office, embassy, or consulate contacts us, we can confirm whether a policy is active, cancelled, or has lapsed. In some cases, we may also proactively share information about cancellations when a policy has clearly been used as part of a visa or residence permit application, if this is required or appropriate to comply with legal or regulatory duties.
This means that cancelling a policy shortly after approval isn’t “invisible”. If an authority checks, we may be asked to confirm the status of the insurance linked to your application.
Before you downgrade or cancel a policy that was used in a visa application, ask yourself whether the current permit explicitly requires a certain type of insurance and if the new insurance will clearly meet those requirements.
The safest route is to confirm with your local immigration office or embassy before making changes, especially if you’re mid-process with an application or extension.
Feel free to reach out to us before you cancel, so we can help you understand what your current policy covers and what might happen if you end it. We can’t give legal advice or guarantee how an authority will decide, but we can explain what type of insurance you have , outline whether it’s typically suitable for your current visa stage and help you explore other options that still keep you properly insured in Germany.
Disclaimer: This article is for general information only and doesn’t replace advice from the immigration office, an embassy, or a legal professional.