Judgment 9C_462/2025 of 17 August 2026
This judgment concerns a woman who worked part-time and was insured with the Pension Fund of the City of Zurich.
Following health problems, the federal Disability Insurance (DI) recognised a degree of disability of 58% for the gainful-employment component. Following the Di Trizio judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and the amendment of the Disability Insurance Ordinance, the DI extrapolated the salary to 100% to determine the degree of disability.
Following an appeal (probably by the insured person), the cantonal court applied the following method: it reduced the income without disability set by the DI office for full-time work (CHF 71,197) to CHF 42,718, in line with the 60% activity rate insured under the occupational pension plan, which gives a degree of disability of 30%.
Although a pension fund is still permitted to calculate the degree of disability using the former DI method (prior to the Di Trizio judgment and the corresponding amendment of the Disability Insurance Ordinance, art. 27bis para. 2 IVV/RAI), the cantonal court applied this 30% rate to the insured person’s 60% activity rate, giving a final degree of disability of 18%, below the minimum of 20% required by the pension fund regulations for a pension to be granted.
The Federal Supreme Court overruled the cantonal court on this point, so that the degree of disability of 30% had to be applied.
Irrespective of this case, if a pension fund states in its pension regulations that the degree of disability determined by the federal Disability Insurance is binding (decisive) for the pension fund, the fund should not recalculate the degree of disability on the basis of the insured salary or of the salary actually earned in the part-time activity.
For an insured person, being told that they are 58% disabled for the gainful-employment component according to the DI, but 30% according to the pension fund, is unsatisfactory and causes incomprehension among insured persons.
One may object that the second pillar covers disability in gainful employment, so that the new DI method cannot or should not be applied.
However, although to our knowledge the Federal Supreme Court has not yet ruled on this question, it cannot be excluded that an insured person will one day bring the matter before our highest court and possibly thereafter before the ECtHR. In such a case, will the Court reach the same conclusion as in the Di Trizio judgment, namely that the former method applied by the DI, and still sometimes applied by pension funds and/or reinsurers, breaches equal treatment insofar as it systematically disadvantages part-time workers and consequently women, given that more women than men work part-time? This is highly likely.