My employee earns more than the SVB/SZV wage limit, but ZV premium is still applied. Why?

• Modified on: Thu, 29 Oct, 2026 at 12:04 PM

ZV is sickness insurance. Normally, employees who earn above the SVB/SZV wage limit are not insured under ZV. But an employee can sometimes still be insured, even with a higher salary. That’s why Celery can’t turn off the ZV premium for you.

How it works

• The ZV premium is turned on by default.
• If it doesn’t apply to an employee, you need to turn it off yourself.
• So keep an eye on the SVB/SZV wage limit, and decide for each employee whether the ZV premium should stay on.

Why Celery can’t decide this automatically

Whether an employee is insured under ZV is checked at two moments:

• When they start working for you.
• Every November, for existing employees. Their salary in November decides whether they are insured under ZV for the whole of next year.

An example

1. In November, an employee earns XCG 4,000 a month. That’s below the wage limit, so they are insured under ZV for next year.
2. In January, they get a raise to XCG 10,000 a month. That’s above the wage limit.
3. The raise doesn’t change their ZV insurance. They stay insured for the rest of that year.
4. So their January payslip still shows ZV premium. It may look strange, but it’s correct. The premium is calculated over the salary up to the wage limit, not over the full XCG 10,000.

The result: an employee can earn more than the wage limit and still need to pay ZV premium. Only you know their full history, so you set the ZV premium yourself.