Pension guide
Tracing a pension from abroad is usually two jobs in one: identifying the scheme (public-register work, location-independent) and accessing your personal record (often gated by a national eID like Government Gateway, DigiD, MyGov, or BankID). The hard part is rarely the search, it's the eID wall, and the answers differ by country.
Find my pensionsFull refund if we find nothing material.
Companies House (UK), the DNB register (NL), and the ATO's super search (AU) are all reachable from any country without your eID. Scheme identification is location-independent.
Government Gateway, DigiD, MyGov, BankID, FranceConnect, each has its own onboarding-from-abroad rules. Some are obtainable overseas (NL DigiD via videocall + BSN); others (UK Government Gateway) often fail HMRC identity checks from abroad.
EU-UK protocol preserves state-pension aggregation; many countries have bilateral social-security agreements with the UK, US, Australia, and Canada. Each country page records the verified treaty position.
Yes for identification, Companies House and the UK Pension Tracing Service are public and work from anywhere. The harder problem is the UK state-pension forecast, which sits behind Government Gateway and HMRC identity checks that frequently fail from overseas.
Almost never. Most pensions can be claimed by post and paid to an overseas bank. The eID hurdle is for the personal-record portal, not for the claim itself.
Generally no for occupational pensions, they remain with the original country's administrator. State pensions may be coordinated where a bilateral or reciprocal agreement exists.