Overseas members
- Living outside the UK?
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Details of your pension payments are shown in your payslips and P60, which can be viewed through our Member Portal. If you need further information about your pension to provide to an authority or organisation in your home country, then please contact us:
- securely through Member Portal or
- by email to: [email protected]
IF your query is about your tax or your residency for tax purposes then you will need to contact HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). We have no involvement in international tax agreements or calculations of allowances. By law we must apply the tax codes provided to us directly from HMRC.
- Payment outside UK
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You can ask us to pay your pension in the country of your residence. If you are interested in this service, then please complete the Payment Mandate Form and return to Pension Services.
We use a company called Convera to pay pensions to overseas bank accounts. We need two weeks' notice to set up the arrangement with Convera before we can make payment to overseas accounts.
Convera do not charge an administration fee. Instead, they make their margin through a reduction to the exchange rate payable.
- Pension Increase
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If you have a Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) then you will need to ask the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to notify us of your circumstances. This is because increases on your State pension are only paid if you live in:
- The European Economic Area,
- Gibraltar or Switzerland,
- Countries with a social security agreement with the UK (but not Canada or New Zealand).
Once we have notification from DWP, we may be able to pay the full pension increase on your pension, depending on which country you are living in.
- Declaration of pension entitlement
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We regularly review a member's entitlement to continue to receive their pension benefits, in order to detect and prevent fraud. Because of this, we may ask you verify your identity - especially if you live overseas. This is normally done through our Member Portal.
If you are unable to use our Portal then we will ask you to complete a "Declaration of Pension Entitlement" form and return this to us, either by post or email. This can be found at: Forms and useful links | Hampshire County Council (hants.gov.uk). We ask you to confirm your address and to sign the form to confirm that you are still entitled to receive a pension paid by the FPS. This form must be witnessed by someone, over 18, who is not a family member.