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Switzerland → United Kingdom

Find your pension after working in Switzerland and United Kingdom

Pensions accrued in Switzerland and United Kingdom 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.

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Full refund if we find nothing material.

What this page rests on

  • Switzerland: Official route read against the source by a person on 2026-07-04, recorded in docs/exports/country-routes-content-extract.md.
  • United Kingdom: Full-market dossier, the published country page records the route and the date each fact was checked.

Each fact below carries its own source and the date it was checked. Our method and the written replies from national authorities are published in full. A named researcher reads every report before it is sent.

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
  • 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 United Kingdom pension entitlement

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

The April-2026 voluntary-NI regime change: cheap Class 2 from abroad is abolished and a one-time transitional door (old rules, incl. Class-2 payers switching without the 10-year residence test) has its own closing date, confirmed by the Future Pension Centre.

If you do nothing

The cheap voluntary-NI window lapses at the transitional door; outside it, only the standard 6-year backdating remains and older years fall away year by year. Workplace pots are preserved (not auto-paid).

Time-critical dates

  • Voluntary-NI transitional door: The rules changed in April 2026. A one-time transitional door under the old rules, including existing Class-2 payers switching to Class-3 without the 10-year test, has its own closing date, which the Future Pension Centre confirms on request. Gaps in the record itself can normally be filled for the past six tax years, each with its own deadline, on 5 April.
  • Short-service refund: If you were in a defined-contribution scheme, a refund of your own contributions was only possible if you left within 30 days of joining (for schemes joined after October 2015). If you were in a defined-benefit scheme, a refund was only possible if you were a member for under two years.

How records are reached

Personal-record access wall: Government Gateway (the personal State Pension forecast / NI record)

Companies House and the government's free Pension Tracing Service are both public, PTS returns scheme contact details only, never balances or membership confirmation, and a well-known commercial namesake (pensiontracingservice.com) is not the government service. The genuine difficulty in UK pension lineage is that employers get acquired, schemes get bulk-bought, providers rebrand, and a 1990s payroll deduction can land in a scheme with a name nobody at the original employer would recognise today.

From abroad: Public records and PTS work from anywhere without your credentials; the personal state-pension forecast needs Government Gateway, and HMRC's identity checks can be hard to pass from overseas. The harder problem from abroad isn't the gateway, it's that scheme-name continuity in the UK breaks repeatedly across decades, and reading that history is what the work actually is.

Cross-border

Many bilateral/reciprocal agreements; post-Brexit EU-UK protocol preserves aggregation. Where you retire decides whether your UK State Pension rises each year or freezes at its first payment for life. Australia, Canada and New Zealand freeze it; the USA does not.

Primary sources: gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details · gov.uk (voluntary NI / state pension) · developer.company-information.service.gov.uk

Cross-border, factual

Switzerland and United Kingdom pensions are not pooled or auto-consolidated. Each leg is worked on its own: registers searched in Switzerland, registers searched in United Kingdom, 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 United Kingdom?

Yes. Our report covers identification work in both Switzerland and United Kingdom 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 United Kingdom pensions combine automatically?

No. Pensions accrued in Switzerland stay with Switzerland schemes; pensions accrued in United Kingdom stay with United Kingdom 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→United Kingdom 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).

See also