Madelin personal-protection simulator (self-employed): cover and tax saving

Simulate the net cost of your protection

The simulator applies your marginal tax rate to the deductible contribution. Your data is neither stored nor transmitted.

The blind spot in self-employed social protection

An employee who stops working sees their income maintained by a structure they often never suspect: daily Social Security benefits topped up by their company’s group protection scheme, death benefit, disability annuity. The self-employed worker (TNS — the self-employed) has none of these safety nets by right. A self-employed person who falls ill or has an accident sees their income collapse, with low or even non-existent compulsory benefits depending on their scheme. The income that funds everything — lifestyle, loans, the children’s schooling — simply stops.

It is precisely this gap that Madelin personal-protection insurance is designed to fill. It allows you to rebuild a replacement income in the form of daily benefits and a disability annuity, and to protect your family through a lump sum or a death annuity. And it rests on a powerful tax mechanism: contributions are deductible from your taxable business profit, within a dedicated ceiling. At a high marginal rate, the tax saving covers a significant share of the contribution — the protection costs far less than it appears, with the State part-funding a fraction of it.

This is the first building block in securing a self-employed director, even before any logic of saving or tax relief: protecting the income that funds everything else. The cover must, however, be correctly sized. This is where independent advice — from a firm that is a member of ANACOFI and free of any insurer’s production targets — changes the game: it calibrates the cover to your real situation, not to a distribution network’s sales grid.

What the self-employed discover too late

Lever 1 — size the cover on real income, not on a standard

The costliest mistake is not the absence of a contract, it is poor sizing. The level of daily benefits must cover your fixed, non-compressible charges; the waiting period (the delay before benefits start) must be consistent with your precautionary cash reserve; and the death benefit must match your real commitments: outstanding loans, years of income to replace for your spouse, the children’s studies. A contract taken out in haste often pays a disability annuity calculated on an obsolete basis, or a death benefit bearing no relation to the family’s liabilities. The cover must match your family situation and your charges — no more, no less.

Lever 2 — align protection, health and retirement into a single structure

Personal protection should not be considered in isolation. Together with Madelin top-up health cover and the retirement savings plan, it forms the director’s protection triptych: health absorbs day-to-day costs, personal protection rebuilds income in a hard knock, retirement prepares for later. These three building blocks share the same Madelin framework and the same deduction ceilings — hence the value of arbitrating them together rather than stacking them up. One euro of ceiling used on protection is no longer available elsewhere: optimisation plays out across the whole, and that is exactly what a global audit settles.

Lever 3 — avoid invisible under-cover and clauses that backfire

Under-cover is never visible until the claim arrives. Many self-employed people believe themselves protected by a minimal contract taken out at the start of their business and never revised, even though their income has since doubled. Conversely, some over-fund a worthless guarantee. The classic pitfalls: restrictive disability definitions (“any occupation” instead of “your own occupation”), exclusions that are too broad, poorly chosen waiting periods, or a frozen death benefit. A protection audit with an adviser avoids both under-cover and over-funding, and re-reads the clauses line by line — where the nasty surprises hide.

Worked example — Élodie, 42, self-employed dental surgeon in Lyon

Élodie earns a comfortable profit and has never seriously revised the personal-protection cover taken out when she set up her practice. In the event of a prolonged absence, her compulsory benefits would barely cover her fixed charges. She puts in place a Madelin contract with an annual contribution of €4,800, calibrated to her real income. Here, at a 41% marginal tax rate, is what that protection really costs:

The Madelin deduction turns a €4,800 contribution into a net cost of around €2,832: the State funds nearly 41% of her protection. The leverage grows with the bracket — at 45%, the net cost would fall below €2,650; at 30%, it would rise to around €3,360. But the real gain is not fiscal: it is the certainty that a spell of sick leave will not destabilise her household.

This case illustrates a simple rule: a self-employed person’s personal protection is not an expense, it is the foundation that secures all the rest of their wealth. And its real cost, once the deduction is applied, is almost always lower than the director imagines.

Cover is checked before the claim, not during it

This simulator gives an order of magnitude for the net cost. The real value is created upstream: sizing the benefits on your real income, choosing the right disability definition, adjusting the death benefit to your family liabilities, and aligning personal protection with your health and retirement cover within a single, coherent Madelin framework.

Balmont Conseil is an independent wealth-management firm, a member of ANACOFI, with no capital ties to any insurer or bank. This independence allows a genuinely objective protection audit: we compare contracts across the whole market and re-read your cover in your interest alone. Let’s arrange a meeting to audit your current cover and identify your blind spots before they reveal themselves.

Frequently asked questions

What does a Madelin personal-protection contract actually cover?

Three major risks the self-employed face with no adequate compulsory safety net: sick leave (daily benefits that rebuild a replacement income), disability (an annuity paid in the event of lasting incapacity), and death (a lump sum or annuity paid to named beneficiaries). All sized to your family situation and your charges, where the compulsory scheme often pays only meagre amounts, or none at all depending on the scheme.

Why does the self-employed worker need protection more than an employee?

Because an employee automatically benefits from daily Social Security benefits topped up by their company’s group protection scheme, a death benefit and disability cover. The self-employed worker has none of these protections by right: they must build them themselves. Madelin personal-protection insurance is the tool that restores this balance, by rebuilding the income that funds everything else.

How do the contributions reduce my tax?

Madelin personal-protection contributions are deductible from your taxable business profit, within a dedicated ceiling. The real saving depends on your marginal tax rate: at 41%, every euro of deductible contribution reduces your tax by 41 cents. That is exactly what the simulator quantifies: it applies your bracket to the deductible contribution to reveal the real net cost of your protection.

How do I know whether my cover is correctly sized?

That is the whole point of an audit. The right reflexes: check that the benefit level covers your non-compressible charges, that the disability definition uses “your own occupation” rather than “any occupation”, that the death benefit matches your real liabilities (loans, years of income to replace), and that the waiting period is consistent with your cash position. Cover sized once and for all at the start of a business is almost always obsolete a few years later.

What is the difference between Balmont Conseil and an insurer or a bank?

An insurer distributes its own contracts; a bank, those of its network. Balmont Conseil is an independent wealth-management firm, a member of ANACOFI, with no capital ties to any insurer or bank. This independence lets us compare protection contracts across the whole market, re-read your clauses with no conflict of interest, and calibrate your cover with regard only to your situation — not to a sales target.