Uk pension claim from Thailand

[brianthainess]

3 minutes ago, anchadian said:

You are definitely not going to need your birth certificate as other docs will suffice namely a copy of the data page of your British passport (this is what I sent and was accepted).  Please see Part 1 About you on the claim form 'Other documents on which your date of birth is recorded may be acceptable'.

Agree even UK driving license was excepted.

[kidneyw]

Filled all the paperwork requested in the form. Hardest part is remembering dates and locations of employment. (no postal codes back then). Posted it off with my birth certificate, which was returned. My pension is paid into my Thai bank every four weeks without fail, except when there is a Thai or UK holiday.

[Saltire]

Can't add much to this really but I turned 66 last week and am now hoping for the first payment next month to my UK bank.

 

1) Would not let me do it online - printed off the long application form and posted it.

2) Had the Poo Yai sign copies of birth certificate, marriage certificate, and UK driving licence. This was accepted.

3) Approval letter sent by DWP on 27 Nov has never arrived, had to call them for details.

4) Decided to change my correspondence address to my brothers UK address. Acceptable.

5) Have to call them to change address no online or email option. No hassle they are very helpful and answer the call quickly. They also respond to all emails though it can take 3 or 4 days.

 

I am aware if you haven't told them you have left the UK you can apply online and get the annual increment but that's not an option for me.

 

Good luck

 

 

 

[scubascuba3]

Note it's often wise to top up any shortfall in NI contributions so you get a full pension. Check free website Pension Advisory Service. You should set up your HMRC online account way in advance of retiring so you can easily see NI years paid and forecast pension. I'm 51 can can already see mine

[BritManToo]

4 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

Note it's often wise to top up any shortfall in NI contributions so you get a full pension. Check free website Pension Advisory Service. You should set up your HMRC online account way in advance of retiring so you can easily see NI years paid and forecast pension. I'm 51 can can already see mine

your advice is probably out  of date,

You would need to live to age 75 to get your extra contributions back and be in profit.

When I was your age it appeared to me to be a good idea, as back then the 'break even' age would have been 73.

Now i'm 65, betting I'll make 75 seems a bad investment.

If I were still 51, betting there would be a UK state pension at age 75 (for expats) would seem a bad risk.

Edited February 24, 2021 by BritManToo

[Golden Triangle]

1 hour ago, Guderian said:

Just curious. My understanding was that some years ago they changed the rules so that your wife can no longer inherit your state pension when you die, so why do they want all the gubbins about marriage certificates and divorces?

I think they need to see marriage certificates & copies of decree nisi & absolute to ensure that there are no court orders etc attached to pensions that ex wives may be entitled to. I think that is also in the declaration that you have to sign.

[Moonlover]

1 hour ago, KannikaP said:

It will possibly take four months for the pack to arrive! What year are we in , using paper, aeroplanes and vans to deliver forms?

 

To get a copy of birth certificate takes 15 days and costs £20. And then they have to post it to you as copies are not allowed. Then you will have to send it back to UK!

I've not heard of any significant delays in mail coming from the UK.

[scubascuba3]

40 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

your advice is probably out  of date,

You would need to live to age 75 to get your extra contributions back and be in profit.

When I was your age it appeared to me to be a good idea, as back then the 'break even' age would have been 73.

Now i'm 65, betting I'll make 75 seems a bad investment.

If I were still 51, betting there would be a UK state pension at age 75 (for expats) would seem a bad risk.

I think it's still sound advice, but don't top up too early, consider it 3 years before claiming. Op should have checked already

Edited February 24, 2021 by scubascuba3

[BritManToo]

1 hour ago, Guderian said:

Just curious. My understanding was that some years ago they changed the rules so that your wife can no longer inherit your state pension when you die, so why do they want all the gubbins about marriage certificates and divorces?

They don't need to know where or with whom I live or any details of my life.

Name and national insurance number is all they get from me.

My previous UK address (still works for credit checks) and lies if they insist on anything else.

My online DWP already seems to have all the relevant records of my working life.

Edited February 24, 2021 by BritManToo

[KannikaP]

46 minutes ago, Moonlover said:

I've not heard of any significant delays in mail coming from the UK.

Got a letter from Nationwide bank last month posted in August 2020.

[Moonlover]

45 minutes ago, KannikaP said:

Got a letter from Nationwide bank last month posted in August 2020.

I received my new debit card from Nationwide last month. It took 2 weeks!

[superal]

3 hours ago, Peter Denis said:

What's the benefit of having it transferred straight into your Thai bank-account?

There are several reports of people doing that encountering trouble with Immigration, when the payment date is at the end of the month and due to holidays/delay it turns up beginning of next month, leaving you with one month without any transfers being done and Imm officers not accepting that.

Also possible problems have been reported when it is paid every 4 weeks and the Annual amount meets the overall 400K/800K requirement but the minimum +40 or +65K monthly transfers are not met every month.

>> Using TransferWise you can determine when and how much you sent over every month (you can also play exchange-rate fluctuations by transferring when rates are favorable).  And your pension statement would be accepted as 'source of the funds'.

Even easier would be making use of the Funds-in-Bank method (if you have the initial +400K or +800K available), which does not require having to prove the source of the funds, nor a steady monthly supply.

 

I read recently that half the UK pensioners with frozen pensions were only receiving £65 per week on average . To overcome that is the following option feasible and legal ?

 

1 /   Have a postal address in one of the reciprocal social security benefits countries .

 

2 / Have a bank account in the postal address country that facilitates online banking .

 

3/ Your UK pension paid into the above account from where it can be transferred to a place of your choice .  

 

Apologies for drifting slightly from the main topic .

[Chongalulu]

4 hours ago, Nurseynutcase said:

I applied for my uk state pension in July last year.  It couldn't be done on-line.

 

I downloaded all the paperwork - extensive form.  Also they what to know all my employment history and where I have lived since birth!!!  Thankfully I had an old C.V. so it was easy(ish) to do but if you have moved around alot it is a bit difficult to remember your home addresses.

 

That said all original document were returned quickly and I got notification of payments to my account a few weeks AFTER it had been paid but I think this was due to postage delays more than anything else.

 

Good luck and bear in mind that you won't get any annual increases until you return to the UK permanently -- also I don't think the under-payments will be back dated.

You will however get paid the 'unfrozen' rate for any time you spend in UK which will revert to the frozen rate once you leave. 
When I claimed my pension 2vyears ago it was ALL done via a phone call which asked far fewer questions than on the form . They hold a lot of information on you centrally anyway (how many years contributions etc) and a lot of the information asked on the form was irrelevant and superfluous. Try the phone method.

[Chongalulu]

28 minutes ago, superal said:

I read recently that half the UK pensioners with frozen pensions were only receiving £65 per week on average . To overcome that is the following option feasible and legal ?

 

1 /   Have a postal address in one of the reciprocal social security benefits countries .

 

2 / Have a bank account in the postal address country that facilitates online banking .

 

3/ Your UK pension paid into the above account from where it can be transferred to a place of your choice .  

 

Apologies for drifting slightly from the main topic .

You can be caught out by the information they hold centrally. You’re not on the electoral roll - you re not registered with a GP - and if you renewed your passport in Thailand. It’s called‘connectivity' and covering more and more aspects 

[scubascuba3]

41 minutes ago, superal said:

I read recently that half the UK pensioners with frozen pensions were only receiving £65 per week on average . To overcome that is the following option feasible and legal ?

 

1 /   Have a postal address in one of the reciprocal social security benefits countries .

 

2 / Have a bank account in the postal address country that facilitates online banking .

 

3/ Your UK pension paid into the above account from where it can be transferred to a place of your choice .  

 

Apologies for drifting slightly from the main topic .

You just have to live with it, you can delay taking the pension so the longer you delay it the bigger it will get + not be frozen. Hopefully people have secondary pension / income

[ChipButty]

4 hours ago, colinneil said:

Interesting reading some of the posts on this thread.

In my case, no birth certificate, ex wife burned it, no problem from DWP.

They asked for my Thai marriage cert, i phoned asked does it have to be translated, no was the answer, we have people here to do that.

Opted for 13 week payments direct into my Thai bank, never had a problem with that.

Same has happened to me, I dont even know my NI number

[worrab]

5 hours ago, Nurseynutcase said:

Can I ask which country you are in?

Live in Thailand.

[steve187]

i have received an invitation code to complete the application on line, not done it yet as trying to sort out one more NI year, or the year we are in now 2020/2021 which needs paying, but normally not until after 6th april

[CMoldie]

I recently started receiving my UK state pension. The letter of invitation** to apply for it arrived just over a month before the pension was due to start. It had instructions for claiming by telephone. One quarter hour phone call in December last year, and I received a text message exactly a week later to say I had been approved. The first payment received in early February. No paperwork of any description. All I needed was my my NI number.

 

I did already have a Government Gateway account, which I had used to get a pension forecast. If the OP has not already had a forecast, I suggest he gets one - it's a good way of checking that they actually have the correct information to get your pension right, and it allows you to register information such as your address in Thailand in advance. If you register an address with Government Gateway that will be the address they send the invitation letter to.

 

https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

 

** the DWP seems to use a bulk mail service - courier to Thailand and then delivered as a domestic letter so it is not too badly delayed, unlike a lot of international mail.

 

Edited February 24, 2021 by CMoldie

[cauldlad]

Anyone getting the increases in Thailand is a fkn fraud.

And the genuine guys are paying for your fkn deceit !!!

[BritManToo]

4 minutes ago, cauldlad said:

Anyone getting the increases in Thailand is a fkn fraud.

And the genuine guys are paying for your fkn deceit !!!

Presumably the genuine guys are not making NI payments, as they already are claiming their pension.

And what someone else gets is really not your business.

[ivor bigun]

49 minutes ago, cauldlad said:

Anyone getting the increases in Thailand is a fkn fraud.

And the genuine guys are paying for your fkn deceit !!!

????

you are a saint ,mind you there are thousands and thousands  of immigrants to Britain  who have never paid in a penny ,unlike all the pensioners who paid all their lives,claiming a fortune every week ,by comparison the pensioners claiming rises are a minute drop in the ocean.

Edited February 24, 2021 by ivor bigun

[cauldlad]

13 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Presumably the genuine guys are not making NI payments, as they already are claiming their pension.

And what someone else gets is really not your business.

 

You are obviously claiming fraudulently, good for you!!

[cauldlad]

12 hours ago, ivor bigun said:

????

you are a saint ,mind you there are thousands and thousands  of immigrants to Britain  who have never paid in a penny ,unlike all the pensioners who paid all their lives,claiming a fortune every week ,by comparison the pensioners claiming rises are a minute drop in the ocean.

Justifying fraudulent claims are you?

[ivor bigun]

26 minutes ago, cauldlad said:

Justifying fraudulent claims are you?

if they paid in all their lives they earned it ,by the way check google and see how many pensioners have been done for fraud for claiming rises ,if you can find even one ,let us know ,

psi i dont mean those claiming the social ,i know one who was caught doing that ,nothing was done even to him except take away some of his payments.a few months later he was back over here for 3 months.

[cauldlad]

All I am saying is the claims are fraudulent whether they are caught or not.

 

By the way I agree they have earned it and it should not matter which country you decide to retire to.

[ivor bigun]

16 minutes ago, cauldlad said:

All I am saying is the claims are fraudulent whether they are caught or not.

 

By the way I agree they have earned it and it should not matter which country you decide to retire to.

lets face it ,this law was brought out when the only people who went to live abroad were rich ,unlike todays pensioners ,mainly from Britain who get the lowest of pensions going .

[cauldlad]

I agree but it is annoying and also unfair when you can get the yearly rise if you decided to move to say, the Philippines.

[superal]

19 hours ago, cauldlad said:

Anyone getting the increases in Thailand is a fkn fraud.

And the genuine guys are paying for your fkn deceit !!!

Some might say if a lifetime of NICs has been made in the UK then a full entitlement of the meagre UK state pension along with annual increases should be made regardless of your chosen country of retirement . Indeed the rules of the pension need rewriting as they are out of date and no longer applicable to modern day living . The UK government know this but are hiding behind the archaic pension rules (at every appeal) which clearly spell out the penalties if living ex domicile and every new signature on enrolment to the scheme  would never have read all the lengthy ts & cs .

 

As for your fraud statement above it beggars belief , indeed , those who manage to gain the annual increases are playing the government at their own pathetic game and so good luck to them in securing what is rightfully theirs .

 

BTW BJ was hit with the complaint of frozen pensions a couple of weeks ago at PM Questions Time and promised to investigate . The rules need rewriting and calculations backdated .

[OJAS]

On 2/24/2021 at 9:50 AM, Pumpuynarak said:

 

That was certainly the case when i did mine in 2015.

Same here - except that I experienced nowhere near the same turn of speed as you did. Sent my claim form + birth certificate registered mail to DWP's Wolverhampton address only to discover that no-one there was prepared to sign for receipt of registered mail at that time, meaning that the whole shooting match went astray. Had to obtain a duplicate birth certificate from GRO and start the claiming process all over again. Not best amused.