How to Claim Your Pension if you are a British person who has retired in Spain

Obviously this is a subject dear to my heart now! Despite having helped countless people to claim their UK and Spanish pensions over the years, it was with some trepidation that I started my own claims, because of, you guessed it, BREXIT

I was told that I would still get my UK Pension under the European Community Agreement on Social Security between the UK and Spain and that it will be uprated annually the same as for someone living in the UK, but you will forgive me for not believing them until the confirmation letter actually arrived.  

If you have previously worked in Tenerife as I have, you will find it has an effect on the way you claim your UK pension entitlement when you come to retirement age. You should be sent a EC rules claim form 4 months before you reach your UK State Pension age, but I telephoned them 3 months and 5 days before not trusting to the sometimes erratic Tenerife Postal system

To claim the UK part of your pension, you can either:

• contact the International Pension Centre
• send the international claim form to the International Pension Centre (the address is on the form)

You can contact the International Pension Centre (IPC):

• by email, using the online enquiry form
• on Twitter

It is taking longer than usual to reply to online queries because of coronavirus (COVID-19). The International Pension Centre is processing all new claims or urgent benefit payment queries first.

Telephone about State Pension
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 218 7777
Textphone: +44 (0) 191 218 7280
Video relay service for British Sign Language (BSL) users – check you can use this service
Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 3.30pm

I downloaded the International claim form and filled it out so I had all the answers ready to hand, but chose to telephone in my application as this avoided having to send off original copies of Birth certificates etc. The phone call was a long one; 37 minutes and suitably pricey at 7 euros, but well worth it as after a few security questions the person in the Overseas Pension Department in Newcastle took all the information over the ‘phone and then confirmed I would receive a letter confirming my claim – which I did about a month later.

International Pensions Direct Payment is the Department for Work and Pensions’ way of paying your pension or benefit direct to an account of your choice outside the United Kingdom.
The advantages
Getting your money paid in this way has many advantages:
• it is secure
• it is convenient
• you will benefit from competitive exchange rates based on bulk buying of currency
• there are no postal delays
• there are no cheque clearance delays
• it is less expensive for them to arrange, which saves taxpayers’ money.
How does it work?
The £ sterling value of your money will be converted to local currency and paid directly to your account. Your pension or benefit will be paid in arrears.
You can choose to be paid at the end of 4 or 13 weeks

State Pension if you retire abroad – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE that in Spain unlike the UK, you MUST have ceased employment or self employment either completely or in certain circumstances partially in order to make your claim.

Because the UK lets you make a claim before retirement age and Spain does not, If you are living here in Tenerife when you retire and have worked and paid contributions in Spain as well as the UK and even if you do not have the full qualifying number of full time equivalent years contributions in Spain, you should also make a 2nd pension claim to Spain after your retirement date. You can do this through the Centros de Atención e Información de la Seguridad Social (CAISS) del Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social (INSS) here in Tenerife, for the Spanish component of your pension, attaching the UK confirmation letter of the part the UK is paying to the Spanish application form.

Currently appointments are scarce due to issues brought on by the Covid Pandemic but the Spanish Social security now offers the possibility of processing transactions WITH a digital identification certificate

here Ciudadanos (seg-social.gob.es) or

WITHOUT one here Solicitud y trámites de la seguridad social (seg-social.es), in which case you do need email which a confirmation code will be sent to. You will also need to take a photo of yourself holding your TIE or NIF card or passport if you don’t have a TIE

In both cases the link to the Spanish Community Regulations Claim form is here Solicitud y trámites de la seguridad social – Pensión de jubilación. Reglamentos Comunitarios (seg-social.es)

Once you have downloaded it and completed it you can upload it again to make your claim on line. You can also check the progress of your claim here

Will I receive a pension from each country? Post Brexit the EU Coordination Regulations also (Spanish information) provide for:

a. Aggregation: using periods of national insurance, residence or work completed in one state to meet the minimum qualifying period in another when determining eligibility for certain social security benefits

b. Applicable legislation: determining which state’s legislation a person is subject to, to determine in which state they pay social security contributions

c. Competency: determining which state is responsible for paying social security benefits and healthcare

d. Equal treatment: ensuring that persons are treated the same as nationals of the host state for social security benefits in scope of the EU Coordination Regulations

e. Export: provisions to allow the payment of certain social security benefits from one state to persons who reside in another state, as if they were resident in the state responsible

Aggregation

The aggregation provision allows periods of national insurance contributions, employment, self-employment or residence completed under the legislation of one member state to be treated as if they were completed in the competent member state for the purpose of entitlement to certain benefits. This is mainly for the purpose of meeting minimum qualifying periods for certain benefits, for example State Pensions, contribution based Job Seeker’s Allowance and contributory Employment and Support Allowance.

For example: A Spanish national who had 7 qualifying years under UK legislation, and 38 years under Spanish legislation, applies to the UK when they reach pension age to claim their UK State Pension. While the 7 years worked in the UK does not meet the minimum qualifying period for a UK State Pension (10 years), the UK authority must take into account the years worked in Spain to meet this threshold and the Spanish national would receive a proportion of a UK State Pension based on their UK national insurance record. This also works in reverse for UK nationals.

Update: November 2021: 3 months on and the UK component of my state pension is dropping into the bank nicely every 4 weeks as requested, but the Spanish component is still “En Tramite” when I check on line. However it is live not archived which is encouraging! If you use Face Book this is an excellent group for Pensioners in similar circumstances who have worked all over the EU https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProtectEuropeanPensions/