In a few weeks, the German pension insurance will again be sending important letters to pensioners abroad. If you don’t react quickly, you risk your pension benefits. What pensioners need to know.
The German pension insurance is currently sending an important message to pensioners living abroad. As “RTL.de” reports, there is a risk that pension benefits will be stopped if you do not respond to the authority’s letter. The aim of the procedure is to check whether the pension recipient is still alive and whether there are no illegal pension payments.
According to information from RTL, this life certificate is sent annually by Deutsche Post AG’s pension service at the request of the German pension insurance company. The letters are usually received by pension recipients in June or July and must be returned by August 16th.
Certain countries are exempt from this certificate because the death of those entitled is automatically reported there. These include Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Israel, Italy, Croatia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Hungary and the United Kingdom.
But: “In individual cases, certificates of life can still be requested. For example, for very old people entitled to pensions from the age of 95,” explains Gundula Sennewald, pension expert at the German Pension Insurance Federation, to “RTL.de”.
The life certificate can either be submitted in person to public bodies such as the police, city administrations, health insurance companies, pension insurance providers, banks or the Red Cross, or sent by letter to the pension service. What is new this year, however, is the option of digital submission via the PostIdent app.
Pensioners who do not respond to the letter from the pension insurance company will initially receive a reminder in September. If there is no response by mid-October, pension payments will stop from the end of November.
For pensioners who live abroad and have not received a letter, Deutsche Post’s pension service recommends contacting their insurance provider and clarifying whether a certificate of life is necessary.