Instructions for recipients of foreign pensions

Some countries need you to confirm your personal details every year using a life certificate. This certificate makes sure that your personal details and survival status are up to date, so that the pension is not accidentally paid after your death. You must send the life certificate abroad in the way that is explained in the instructions. If you don’t send it abroad, your pension payment will usually be stopped. For example, if the Estonian authority does not receive your life certificate by 1 March, the payment of your Estonian pension will be stopped as of April.

Different ways to send a life certificate:

• Not all countries send reminders about the life certificate. Instead, they expect you to send it to them every year without them asking you to.
• Some countries send you a form to ask you to confirm your current information. Usually, you need the relevant authority or institution in the country that you live in to confirm (with their signature and stamp) that you are still alive.
• In Finland, you can ask the Digital and Population Data Services Agency for a life certificate. This certificate is for countries that want to check your personal data every year without sending you a form of their own to confirm that you are still alive.
• Some countries also offer online options for verifying personal data.

Read more on other sites:

• Life certificate (Dvv.fi)

If your pension from another country has been stopped, it may be because you were getting a fixed-term pension or because you have not sent in whatever information the foreign pension provider has asked for. If you were getting a disability pension, you might not get it anymore if you have reached the retirement age in that country and you have not yet claimed or received a decision on your old-age pension from that country.

The payment of your pension may also have stopped because you did not send in the life certificate on time.

If you get a pension from a pension provider in another country, tell them as soon as possible if your circumstances change. This includes changes to your address, marital status and bank account number, as well as information about a new job or self-employment.

The Finnish Centre for Pensions will receive information about a change in your address with a slight delay after the Population Register has been updated. Once we have your new address, we will also send the information to the foreign pension providers that you get a pension from.

Your new account number will not be sent abroad by the Finnish Centre for Pensions. If you are a pension recipient, you must tell the foreign pension provider paying out your pension to you as soon as possible if your circumstances change. This includes changes to your address, marital status and bank account number, as well as information about a new job or self-employment.

Contact the pension provider that pays out your pension from abroad.

The Finnish Centre for Pensions does not keep a record of the amounts of pension paid by foreign pension providers.

If a pension recipient dies, their next of kin should tell the foreign pension provider as soon as possible. Otherwise, the foreign pension provider may pay out more pension than they should. If that happens, the foreign pension provider will recover the overpayment afterwards.

If the next of kin do not know from which pension provider or from which country the pensioner was paid a pension, they can contact the Finnish Centre for Pensions’ Customer Service.

The Finnish Centre for Pensions will receive information about the death of a pensioner with a slight delay once the Population Register has been updated. When we have been informed of the death of the pension recipient, we will also send the information to the foreign pension provider from which the pension recipient, according to our register data, has received a statutory pension.