I battled German bureaucrats to win back forgotten pension worth £6.5k

Like many people, as she approached retirement Mary Quinton took a closer look at her finances.

As a business studies teacher for 33 of her 66 years, her main pension arrangements were straightforward. But Mrs Quinton, from Norwich, remembered paying into a pension scheme during a year working abroad as a bank clerk in Düsseldorf, Germany, in the 1970s.

Last year, after a dogged back-andforth with the German authorities, she was surprised to find that despite only paying into the system for a year, she was entitled to a pension from the German state which will mean euros into her bank account every month for life – on top of her UK entitlements. The pension is now worth close to £260 a year – or £6,500 over a 25 -year retirement.

Mrs Quinton said: “It certainly wasn’t a quick process and as my German is now pretty rusty all the paperwork took even longer. But once I realised that I was going to meet the criteria for a pension, I was motivated to see it through and I’m definitely glad I did.”

Her first port of call was her former employer, which said it could find no record of her pension contributions – but suggested she make contact with the rentenversicherung – the German state pension department – to check her entitlements. In order to claim a German state pension at the minimum level, a worker has to have at least five years of contributions to the system.

She had many fond memories of the 12 months from July 1977 she spent in North Rhine-Westphalia, working on her language skills as part of her undergraduate degree at Loughborough University. But as that was the only time she had lived in Germany, she was pessimistic about her chances of becoming a German pensioner.

Her application stumbled at the first hurdle when Berlin bureaucrats could find no evidence that she had worked in Germany. After digging through old paperwork, she sent over payslips proving she had paid in 94.50 deutsch marks per month for 12 months.

A good start, and according to the regulations any time spent in post-16 education and training, or caring for relatives, can also count towards that minimum number of years – even though this was in the UK. She said: “Once I’d added all of those up I was confident I had enough credits to get my pension application over the line.”

After six months of sending off forms, Mrs Quinton received a verdict.

As well as her year of payments, her education years were admissible towards her contributions, leaving her with 67 admissible months – equal to five-and-a-half years and entitling her to a pension. She now receives 24.59 euro per month from the rentenversicherung. Mrs Quinton said: “It’s not a massive amount of money, but it all adds up, especially during a cost of living crisis.”