Former Yugoslavia mailout 106-24011531

The mailout is to identify customers who have to claim a foreign pension from a country that was formerly part of Yugoslavia, due to their work history in that country.

Customers selected for the mailout:

• are current on Age Pension
• are under 80 years of age
• are living in Australia
• have Yugoslavia recorded on the Country of Residence (CRES) screen
• have no existing foreign pension data on the Foreign Pension Details (FPD) or Foreign Claim Details (FGD) screens for:
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Croatia
• Kosovo
• Montenegro
• North Macedonia
• Serbia
• Slovenia

The mailout will not include customers on Disability Support Pension (DSP) or over 80 because of the low likelihood of a foreign pension grant.

The mailout will run from mid-February 2024 to mid-December 2024.

Customers subscribed to online letters through myGov will get a mailout letter via their online account, with an online task to complete within 21 days.

Customers not subscribed to myGov will get a mailout letter via post. They will have 21 days to contact Centrelink International Services (CIS).

Failure to respond to the online task or contact CIS within 21 days will result in payment suspension for failure to reply to correspondence (FRC).

CIS staff must key the Foreign Claim Detail (FGD) screen to show the customer responded to the mailout review with a status of ISS or FIN. If FGD is not coded, it will incorrectly suspend the customer’s payment and they may receive another letter.

Note: customers not targeted in the mailout, or who have not got a letter, may contact to ask for a claim. Any claims issued as a result of this contact are regarded as voluntary. See Assisting customers to claim a foreign pension.

Yugoslavia officially existed from 1918 to 1992. From 1991 the breakup started:

• 25 June 1991, Croatia and Slovenia declared independence
• 8 September 1991, North Macedonia declared independence
• 3 March 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence and is made up of two entities: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Federacija) and Republic of Srpska (Republika Srpska)

From 27 April 1992, the remaining states of Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo (province of Serbia) were renamed as Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The name changed in 2003 to Serbia and Montenegro until further separation:

• 3 and 5 June 2006, Montenegro and Serbia separated into independent countries
• 17 February 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia

Customers may have entitlement to a pension from one or more of the 7 current countries, even if they lived there when it was part of Yugoslavia. For example, a person who lived and worked in the Croatian part of Yugoslavia in 1960 can claim a Croatian pension. This is despite Croatia not being an official sovereign state in 1960.

A customer who worked/lived in Republika Srpska, could claim a pension from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Whilst there are separate Pension Funds for Federacija and Republika Srpska, there is only one claim pack for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA). The BA pension authorities will decide which fund will process the claim. A customer who worked/lived in Serbia, would claim a pension from Serbia.

Some customers may identify as Yugoslav from Yugoslavia and will not identify with any of the independent states. As Yugoslavia no longer exists, there is no foreign pension they can claim.

Some customers may not recognise Kosovo as an independent country. A customer who worked in the Kosovo region may maintain they worked in Serbia. They can test eligibility to a Serbian pension.

Discussing the former Yugoslavia may cause distress to some customers and trigger memories of war.

An exemption from claiming a foreign pension can be coded for these customers. See Table 2, Step 8 in Assisting customers to claim a foreign pension.

CIS staff are responsible for:

• helping customers with the former Yugoslavia mailout foreign pension queries. This includes decisions on compulsory claims, Comparable Foreign Payment (CFP) suspensions and preparing foreign pension claims or other lodged forms and documents for sending to the other country
• processing all Foreign Pension System (FPS) reviews

All staff can:

• refer customers to CIS when a customer has worked long enough in the former Yugoslavia to allow CIS to issue a compulsory claim
• manually issue a voluntary claim through the FPS if a customer or non-customer asks for one

Access staff must help customers with queries on claiming foreign pensions, including referring to 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

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 are in the individual country file in International Social Security Agreements
• Other significant non-agreement countries are 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