Only a minority of self-employed people in the Netherlands carry disability cover, and a proposed mandatory scheme has kept the question in the news for years without changing anything yet. What exists today is a voluntary insurance market alongside an informal mutual-fund alternative, each working on quite different terms.
No, still voluntary as of 2026. A bill for mandatory basic disability cover for the self-employed, the Wet BAZ, cleared the cabinet and went to parliament earlier in 2026, but it isn't expected to take effect before 2030 and is still moving through committee review — proposed terms so far are a premium around 5.4% of profit, capped near €171 a month, with a two-year waiting period before it pays out. Until then it's entirely your choice: private AOV insurers, or the informal alternative a lot of freelancers use instead, a broodfonds (bread fund) — a small group of self-employed people who each pay into a shared pool monthly and draw from it if someone gets sick, run on mutual trust rather than an insurance contract. It's usually cheaper than commercial AOV if you're younger and healthy, but it isn't regulated insurance, and what you can actually draw is capped by how much the group has saved up.