Assisting customers to claim a foreign pension 106-08010010

Customers who need assistance, or believe they would not qualify for a foreign pension or wish to apply for an exemption from the requirement to claim are advised to contact Centrelink International Services (CIS).

Customers can be temporarily granted an extension to their Comparable Foreign Payment (CFP) claim period if bereaved.

Automatic screening for the foreign age pension will only occur 28 days before the customer turns Australian Age Pension age.

Automatic screening will not occur where a customer reaches the foreign country’s age pension age, which may be earlier. For example, a Disability Support Pension (DSP) customer turning foreign age pension age at 65, would be not auto-screened because they are not within 28 days of Australian Age Pension age. Foreign pension claims for these customers can be issued voluntarily (ISS-VOL), noting that reviews for follow-up of the claim will not occur.

Foreign age pension claims that are issued VOL, will need to have a review set for 28 days before Australian Age Pension age for follow-up or re-issue of the foreign age pension claim.

Age pension age for other countries can change and is updated in the automated screening rules, however sometimes there may be a delay in having this updated.

• All staff can manually issue a voluntary claim through the Foreign Pension System (FPS) if requested by a customer or non-customer
• Access staff must help customers with queries on claiming foreign pensions, including referring to International Services (CIS) or directing customers to service centres
• Service centre staff must help customers with lodging claim forms and other documents, including scanning, copying and certifying any necessary documents
• CIS staff are responsible for helping customers and network staff with foreign pension queries, including decisions on compulsory claims and Comparable Foreign Payment (CFP) suspensions and preparing foreign pension claims or other forms and documents that have been lodged for sending to the other country. CIS are also responsible for processing all FPS reviews

The requirement to claim a foreign pension only applies to agreement countries and specific other high volume non-agreement countries. Known information on qualification and requirements for foreign pensions from:

• Agreement countries can be found in the individual country file within the International Social Security Agreements
• Other significant non-agreement countries can be found in Eligibility and coding of foreign pensions from non-agreement countries. Note: as details are not available for all countries, staff may not be able to help customers to claim a pension in all cases