Procedures
Of The European Pension Insurers
In general all pension insurers use a fully digitalized system,
which makes all data instantly available. However, the laws and regulations
of the individual German, Swiss and/or Austrian insurance carriers
are different, complex and are subject to constant changes.
This
results in rather time-consuming procedures every time a request
or claim works its way through their systems. So it will take on
the average about three months until an application for a pension
has been approved even when all necessary documentation has been
provided and accepted. Additional requests like the approval of
new documentation and/or the adding-on of time-periods require
a lengthy
processing time, which can take up to 12 or 18 months.
Unfortunately
we have no influence on the duration it takes to process a claim
or request. The best time-saving procedure is to (with your help)
provide the insurance carrier with as much and as precise information
as you can. That way you avoid time-consuming check backs by
the Social Security administrations. When
you make your retirement plans please take into consideration
the duration it may take for your claim(s) to work its way through
the system. Start your application process now so that by the time
you have reached your retirement age all documentation is at hand
and all questions have been answered. That way the time it will take
to process your application will be short and you will be able to
receive your pension payouts immediately.
Application for Pension
Only after an application has been submitted to the Social Security
Administration will a pension be approved. The application consists
of several pages of a pre-printed form, which the applicant has
to fill out. In order to process the application the German Social
Security Administration requires a time-period of approximately
four to six months, provided all documentation is available,
there are no question-marks, no back-checks and there are no
requests for you to provide additional proofs.
Taking this into consideration we suggest that you at the latest
at the age of 60 or at least 5 years before your planned retirement
have us check the status of your insurance account to make sure
all information has been recorded and that those records are
correct so that you will receive the maximum possible pay-outs.
For example, had any of your previous German employers submitted
incorrect or incomplete contributions you would find out about
this only after the Social Security Administration had approved
your pension. It would then require a rather extensive, expensive
and time-consuming effort on your part to have the necessary
corrections made to your pension account, during which time you
will receive no pension or at the very best only a token amount.
Therefore we urge you, regardless of your present age, to already
now gather and secure all job-related details of any professional
activities you had in Germany and clear these information with
the German Social Security Administration. You should do so even
if you have plans to again work in Germany at any time in the
future. Out of experience we can tell you that it is very difficult
to correct mistakes after 10 or 20 years that were made by a
German employer or a German public office. To correct such mistakes
after such a long period of time you would need extensive proofs;
and the more time has passed the more difficult it will be to
obtain those proofs.
Make good use of the time until you plan to retire. Please appoint
us now so we can assist you with clearing all the details.
Your Pension
Account
All pension insurance carriers record the times, your annual
contributions, the amounts of your salaries and all other for
your pension relevant information and data in your insurance
account. This account reflects your professional career as far
as it is relevant for the calculation of your pension. Any missing
data or false recordings or mistakes will have a negative impact
on the amount of your eventual pension pay outs.
Please let us establish for you what information has been credited
to your pension account and make sure that all the data are correct.
We will point out to you how you can check the correctness and
completeness of these recordings and assist you if needed in
the necessary corrections and/or supplementations of your data.
Your pension account is as important as your bank account! Make
sure you are in control of it!
Account
Clearing
You can at any time, even after many years, request corrections
to your pension account. If there are missing or incorrect data
on your account you are by-and-large not held responsible for
these mistakes. However, you are responsible for proving that
the information is indeed incorrect. Acceptable proofs would
be job-related documentation, certificates, salary statements
and even the testimony of a witness.
We can offer you our specialized service in assisting you with
the correction(s) of incorrect or missing data on your pension
account. We conduct our research at the source through our German
partner, who will, if necessary, interrogate witnesses, check
with public offices (records) and even find individuals who could
shed light on your problems.
Because this may expand into an extensive effort we will advise
you on whether it will be worth our time and your expense if
the outcome will result in only a marginal increase in your pension
pay-outs.
Amending (Post-recording) of Time-periods and Contributions
Should our research show that there are missing time-periods
and/or contributions on your pension account or that for example
one or more of your salaried jobs have not been recorded, that
will, of course, have a negative impact on the amount of your
eventual pension pay-outs.
We will assist you in the research and in adding the missing
time-periods and contributions to your pension account. In case
of any missing documentation we will go to the source and assist
you in your investigations. We will consult witnesses and check
with official departments and offices and even try to find certain
person(s) if he/she could shed some light on your problem.
Should it become apparent that our research will be rather extensive
and time-consuming we will be able to offer you an estimation
of whether the efforts and moneys required for finding the requested
documentation will be worth the increase in your pension-pay-outs.
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