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SwitzerlandNetherlands

Find your pension after working in Switzerland and Netherlands

Pensions accrued in Switzerland and Netherlands are administered separately by each country's providers and registers. We do the identification work in both jurisdictions, the route is different in each, and we use the verified route per country.

Find my pensions

Full refund if we find nothing material.

Your Switzerland pension, what we can identify

Verified country facts

Every line below is drawn from the verified country dossier. We never fabricate facts; candidate items are gated out of customer-facing copy.

Why it matters

Switzerland holds vested 2nd-pillar benefits for people who left the country without transferring out, a category most departed workers do not realise applies to them. A hard age-100 forfeiture clock runs underneath it (first real forfeitures executed in 2024), and AHV state-pension arrears die on a rolling 5-year basis.

If you do nothing

2nd-pillar vested benefits stay findable but are forfeited at age 100 (BVG Art. 41; heirs excluded); AHV arrears die on a rolling 5-year basis, apply at 72 and months older than 5 years are permanently gone. None of this is automatic.

Time-critical dates

  • Voluntary-AHV door: 1-year window for voluntary AHV continuation
  • AHV arrears forfeit: Rolling 5-year, claims are NOT automatic; arrears beyond 5 years are permanently lost
  • 2nd-pillar extinguishment: Age 100 (BVG Art. 41; heirs excluded)
  • Zentralstelle 2. Säule central search: The Zentralstelle 2. Säule runs a free central search for forgotten second-pillar assets. The request can be made from abroad by post or by email.Official source, checked 21 August 2026
  • Guarantee Fund transfer and lapse at 100: Unclaimed second-pillar assets transfer to the Guarantee Fund around ten years after reference age, and claims lapse on the 100th birthday of the holder.Official source, checked 21 August 2026
  • AHV back-payment extinction: Back-payments of AHV claims are extinguished five years after they fell due (ATSG art. 24).Official source, checked 21 August 2026

How records are reached

Personal-record access wall: None at the central-search level, Switzerland is one of the rare no-wall countries for vested-benefits identification.

Switzerland is unusual: a free national vested-benefits search exists for people who left without transferring, and the AHV contribution record is obtainable without personal eID, where you can use these routes yourself, use them. The hard part isn't access; it's that a Swiss career fragments across employers, cantons and short spells, and the vested pots from each sit in different institutions with no single thread tying them together.

From abroad: Distance isn't the wall here, the search is reachable from abroad. The cross-border difficulty is that the institution holding each pot depends on which employer you had when, and that lineage isn't something a leaver typically remembers a decade out.

Cross-border

EU coordination; DE↔CH dual-minimum aggregation; per-treaty options.

Primary sources: Auffangeinrichtung / Zentralstelle 2. Säule · compenswiss / SAK Geneva (AHV)

Your Netherlands pension, what we can identify

Verified country facts

Every line below is drawn from the verified country dossier. We never fabricate facts; candidate items are gated out of customer-facing copy.

Why it matters

Your Dutch pension is being moved into the new system (Wtp / invaren) by 1 January 2028, funds must inform members but often cannot reach those who moved abroad.

If you do nothing

The accrued pension is converted ("invaren") into the new system whether or not the member is reached; no escheat and payment claims never prescribe while alive, but months beyond the backdating window are lost on eventual claim.

Time-critical dates

  • Update your address before your fund converts: Dutch funds are converting all pensions to the new system by 1 January 2028, deferred members included, with no individual objection right, and they write to last known addresses. Update your address with every old fund before yours converts.
  • Wtp transition final date: 1 January 2028 (extended from 2027 by the Eerste Kamer on 2 December 2025). ~half of members converted by mid-2026; ABP 1 Jan 2027Official source, checked 21 August 2026

How records are reached

Personal-record access wall: DigiD (or EU eIDAS) for mijnpensioenoverzicht.nl (AOW + all second-pillar)

mijnpensioenoverzicht.nl consolidates AOW + every second-pillar pension in one place behind DigiD, and the DNB register is publicly searchable. What makes the Netherlands distinctive is that Dutch workplace pensions are not employer-by-employer in the way they look, they are industry-sector by mandate, which means identification has more signal than most countries offer, but the third pillar (lijfrente) sits entirely outside the register and is the most-missed layer.

From abroad: DigiD is obtainable from abroad (videocall/balie with a BSN), EU eIDAS keys work, and AOW is claimable from abroad through your residence-country institution without DigiD. Two real gaps remain: a lapsed DigiD plus a closed Dutch bank account is a slow re-onboarding problem, and heirs have no access route at all because DigiD locks on death, a citable gap, not a workaround.

Cross-border

EU coordination; NZ↔NL voluntary-AOW carve-out from the s.70 deduction (rare).

Primary sources: DNB public register · mijnpensioenoverzicht.nl · rijksoverheid.nl / SVB

Cross-border, factual

Switzerland and Netherlands pensions are not pooled or auto-consolidated. Each leg is worked on its own: registers searched in Switzerland, registers searched in Netherlands, and contact details surfaced where the dossier supports it. State pensions may be affected by bilateral or reciprocal agreements between the two jurisdictions, each country page records what its dossier establishes; we do not invent treaty effects.

Frequently asked questions

Can PensionHunter trace a pension from Switzerland when I now live in Netherlands?

Yes. Our report covers identification work in both Switzerland and Netherlands as separate jurisdictions. Each country's pensions are administered locally; we work each one using the access route published on its country page.

Do my Switzerland and Netherlands pensions combine automatically?

No. Pensions accrued in Switzerland stay with Switzerland schemes; pensions accrued in Netherlands stay with Netherlands schemes. They are administered separately. Bilateral and reciprocal agreements may affect state pension aggregation in some pairs, see each country page for what its dossier records.

What does the Pension Identification Report deliver for a Switzerland→Netherlands working history?

An identification-only report covering both jurisdictions: registers searched, any provider matches with contact details, and any registers that require you to check directly using your own credentials. We do not give financial advice, transfer pensions, or estimate values.

What if you find nothing?

Full refund if we find nothing material. Fixed fee, $99 Country Pension Identification Report, $499 Enhanced Pension Identification Report, $799 Global (covers all requested countries).