You can have your pension paid into an overseas bank account

If you’re changing from a UK bank account to an overseas bank, it’s important to make sure your details, and the details of your new chosen bank are correct.

Once you’ve registered with your chosen bank, the best way for us to verify the bank and your details is through you obtaining and sending us a bank statement from your new bank. When we receive this, we’ll send it to Citibank, the company we use to exchange your pension into your new country’s currency, and they’ll be able to vet this new bank quickly. This will speed up the process of getting your pension to your new bank account.

If you’ve got an overseas bank account, it costs £2 a month (£26 per year from us), which we’ll offset by getting a good exchange rate through Citibank. You’ll need to check with the overseas bank if there’s a charge for receiving an overseas payment.

Can you still use a UK bank account to receive your pension?

If you plan on keeping your UK bank account, we’ll pay you in the same way as if you were living in the UK. However, it’s important to check you can maintain a UK bank account without a UK address and that will depend on your current UK bank.

If you’re closing your UK bank account, you’ll need to complete a form with the details of your overseas bank.

If you’re thinking of transferring to a scheme overseas…

Transferring can take a couple of days because of the additional process. You can find more information about transfers here.

You’ll still receive written correspondence from us

Pension documents will still be sent to you overseas, such as your:

• Annual Benefit Statement (ABS)
• Summary Funding Statement (SFS)
• Pension saving statement
• Newsletters

In some countries, the postal service may take longer for you to receive your documents for us, so it’s important that you research this. However, by registering for your myFund account, you can access all your important pension documents online.

We’re currently exploring giving members the option of opting out of paper communications and will update you with our progress.

Impact on cost of living increases to State Pension if you’re over State Pension age

With certain countries, your UK State Pension will be fixed and you may not receive any cost of living increases to it.

Further information about the State Pension if you retire abroad is available on the Gov.uk website at  gov.uk/state-pension-if-you-retire-abroad.