Receiving UK state pension as a German citizen

martinchap74

I am a German citizen who has lived and worked in the UK for the past 7 years, with 17 years left until I reach the pensionable age of 67, here in the UK.

 

Worryingly I tried to see how many years pension I have via the gov. site, but it did not recognise any of my details, name, address, national insurance number etc… I was given a gateway i.d. but was unable to access my national insurance contributions. My British husband logged into his without any issues.

So, this got me to thinking; when I come to retire at the age of 67 with 24 years national insurance contributions, will I be able to get a UK state pension? And would I be able to top this up or claim for the years I have worked in Germany and other EU countries?

If anyone has gone through this, I would be grateful to know your experience or if you have any input on this subject, I would be grateful.

 

Thank you.

molerat

Can you access your GG account and get your tax info and NI record etc ?

It could just be that at present with under 10 years of contributions you have no entitlement to a pension purely on your UK record so it doesn't show anything. You would though be entitled to a UK pro rated pension of your current years by using your overseas record to take the current amount to 10, the system currently doesn't know that though.  Once you reach the UK 10 amount the forecast should become available.  You will be able to get a pension based on your UK record and likely overseas pensions based on those records even if you don't have the necessary minimum for each country.  You will not be able to top up your UK pension with years before you moved to the UK.

Bostonerimus1

You definitely should get a UK state pension. I would request a pension forecast from HMRC.

martinchap74

Molerat and Bostonerimus1: Thank you for your help. To be honest im quite lost in the sense, ive worked all over the EU, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, so my what would be N.I contributions (for those countries) will be hard to track down, I'm guessing?

If anyone else has input please join in. 

Eldi_Dos

martinchap74 said:

If anyone else has input please join in. 

The importance of keeping paperwork even though it may be difficult when moving from one country to another.

Bostonerimus1

martinchap74 said:

Molerat and Bostonerimus1: Thank you for your help. To be honest im quite lost in the sense, ive worked all over the EU, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, so my what would be N.I contributions (for those countries) will be hard to track down, I'm guessing?

If anyone else has input please join in. 

As soon as you reach 10 years of NI you won't need to use payments to foreign schemes to qualify for the UK pension, but it's important to keep track of them in case they also qualify you for a non-UK pension. I'm in the US and for a time I couldn't access the UK pension forecast online so I wrote to HMRC and got one mailed to me. It took about 3 months, but I did get it...this was 10 years ago.

Brie

There are recipricol agreements with many countries particularly within the EU.  

You might benefit from reading up a bit on the international pension site for the UK.   I did look into this when I was approaching pension age but it turned out that there was no benefit to me combining my UK and foreign pension so I left things separate.

International Pension Centre - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

p00hsticks

martinchap74 said:

Molerat and Bostonerimus1: Thank you for your help. To be honest im quite lost in the sense, ive worked all over the EU, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, so my what would be N.I contributions (for those countries) will be hard to track down, I'm guessing?

If anyone else has input please join in. 

As Eldi_dos says, it's very important to keep a record of where you've worked and when.

I'm not sure which country would take the lead in your situation, but I believe that when being sent an invitation to claim the British State Pension, you are asked if you have every worked abroad and if so where and when. The International Pension Centre then liaise with their counterparts in the named countries to work out what you should get and from who. 

MK62

This page might be useful....... https://www.gov.uk/guidance/benefits-and-pensions-for-eea-and-swiss-citizens-in-the-uk

....particularly the bit where it states....."If you have made social security contributions in the EEA or Switzerland by 31 December 2020 and you are covered by the EU Withdrawal Agreement, you can still use these to help you qualify for a UK State Pension".

pinnks

You are covered by the EU Withdrawal Agreement, meaning the EU rules on the coordination of social security systems (EC 883/2004) continue to operate.  This includes your time in Switzerland.  The policy behind those regulations is that a person should not be disadvantaged for benefit purposes (state pension in this context) because they exercised their EU/CH freedoms.

What this means is that you will get a separate pension from each country in which you have a contribution record.  Each country does 2 calculations and pays the higher amount as your pension from them.  For the UK, the maths is always identical once you have 10 UK years but for other countries (Germany in particular) these rules can increase the amount of pension significantly, in addition to getting you past any minimum period requirements.  Citizenship is irrelevant.

First, a country calculates the amount of pension by applying its rules to your record in that country, so this could be £0 if you do not have enough weeks/months/years etc

Then, they calculate a theoretical amount of pension under their rules, on the assumption that all of your contribution periods were made in that country (disregarding foreign periods that overlap with domestic ones).  This is called aggregation.  This theoretical amount is then pro-rated based on your actual record in that country.  This gets you past minimum requirements etc and would then be more than £0.

The procedure for claiming your pensions is to apply for each pension at the relevant pension age for that pension through the pension authority in your country of residence, so DWP International Pension Centre in the UK.  They send you a form CFN901 to provide personal information and foreign pension references etc.  It is not difficult to complete.  They pull all records together from all countries on that form, and forward the combined information to all countries.  Each country then contacts you directly to finalise your award.

Note, for Germany it would be worth doing a Kontenklärung with the DRV Bund in Berlin to have any non-German, post-17, education and training periods added to your German record (this is separate from the EU rules and feeds into the first calculation above as well as the second).  Also, ask DRV for a Rentenauskunft based on your German and all other records. This will tell you where you stand with the "innerstaatliche Berechnung" (calculation 1 above) and the "zwischenstaatlice Berechnung" (calculation 2 above), and inform you whether you can take your pension at 63 (reduced) with 35 years (420 months) "langjährig Versicherte", or at 64+ (not reduced) with 45 years (540 months) "besonders langjährig Versicherte".  Germany counts a month if at least 1 day in the month is covered by contribution record.