A field note from Capital Find Money
Before you leave a country: the pension checklist
A one-page checklist for anyone about to move country. Send it to someone who is packing.
Moving country takes a long list. Visa, flat, bank, school, phone, the boxes. The pension is almost never on it.
That is how capital goes quiet. Not through any single mistake, but because the systems that hold it were built for people who stay. When you leave, the fund keeps your old address, the login keeps your old phone number, and nobody tells anyone. Years later the record is still there. You are just no longer connected to it.
Ten minutes before you go can save a family months later. Here is the list.
Write down every employer you had in this country.
Full legal names, not the brand on the door. Add the years and the city. Companies merge and rename; the legal name is what a pension scheme will recognise.
Find your national insurance or social security number and keep it somewhere you will still have in twenty years.
This number is the key to your state pension record. In many countries it is very hard to find again from abroad.
Save the names of your workplace pension schemes.
They are usually on your payslip, your contract or an annual statement. Take a photo of one statement from each.
Log in to the official portal once, while you still can.
Download your contribution history as a PDF. Most portals open only with a national digital identity tied to a local phone number or address. After you leave, that login can stop working.
Give every scheme a forwarding email address, not just a postal one.
An email address travels with you. A postal address stays behind.
Note your name exactly as it appears on the records.
If you change your surname later, the old one is the one the scheme will search for.
Leave a forwarding address that crosses borders.
National systems cannot follow you to another country. The free Global Pension Finding Register lets you leave one forwarding address for your pensions, once, so funds that join can still reach you. Nothing is shared unless you and the fund both say yes.
Tell one person where this list is.
A partner, a sibling, a grown child. If they ever need to find it, they will know where to start.
Already left? Start with the free official route.
If you are reading this years too late, the money is usually still there. Start with the official, free tool for the country you worked in. We always point people to the free government tracing route first, and we take nothing from financial advisers. These are the official routes for some of the countries people most often leave, each with a plain-language guide to using it from abroad:
- United Kingdom: the government Pension Tracing Service. Guide: Finding a lost UK pension.
- Netherlands: Mijn Pensioenoverzicht (needs DigiD). Guide: Dutch pension from abroad.
- Germany: Deutsche Rentenversicherung customer portal. Guide: German pension from abroad.
- Switzerland: the Zentralstelle 2. Säule central search. Guide: Swiss vested-benefits search.
- Australia: the ATO lost super search through myGov. Guide: Lost Australian super.
- Spain: Tu Seguridad Social and your vida laboral. Guide: Spanish pension from abroad.
- Italy: your INPS record, with free help from patronato offices. Guide: Italian pension from abroad.
- Poland: the eZUS online account. Guide: Polish ZUS from abroad.
- Philippines: My.SSS, plus GSIS and Pag-IBIG. Guide: Philippine pension records.
- Israel: the Har HaKesef search (no digital identity needed). Guide: Israeli pension from abroad.
For other countries, PensionHunter keeps a free directory of official government pension portals and what each one needs to log in.
If you worked in more than one country and do not know where to begin, the free lost pension checker takes about two minutes.
To count how many pension records your career may have created, try the Left-Behind Count.
Why we published this
Capital Find Money helps people find money they lost track of, and its Transmissions essays look at how capital is allocated, verified and reconnected across borders. This page is the practical end of that argument. For the thinking behind it, read On mobile workers.
For where the public tools stop, read On the free route. PensionHunter is operated by our publisher, Battersea Park Capital.
Share this page with anyone who is about to move. That is the whole point of it.
— Capital Find Money · Field note