Every year we write out to retired members, and spouses of deceased members, who live overseas asking you to provide proof of your identity. It helps us prevent fraud and confirms our records are accurate and up-to-date.

We’ve recently written out to you if you live abroad to explain there’s a new process taking place this year which asks you to visit a local Western Union agent to prove your identity in person.

In our warm up letter we did ask you to contact us if you foresaw any issues with visiting a local Western Union agent so hopefully you have done this already if you have any concerns.  If you have not yet received a reply, don’t worry we are looking at these now and be in touch shortly.  If you haven’t contacted us about any issues and need to do so, please do get in touch now.

The one thing we’re asking you to do now is to check and confirm that the name on the letter you’ve received from the team is correct.  If your name is wrong or incorrect, please contact the team and let us know.  We do need to provide final member details to Western Union the week commencing 16 October so if you haven’t contacted us yet, please do this urgently:

  • Online – please log into your member self-service account and contact the team using the Contact us link
  • Not registered online and would like to sign up – please telephone +44 141 447 0799. We can help set up an account for you and give you immediate access for the purpose of this exercise.
  • You’re not online – please let the team know by calling +44 1483 661 340. Some changes may be possible over the phone but we might need to ask you to provide supporting evidence- it would be useful to have this to hand when you call.

If you have contacted us already, then we have this in hand and will be in touch with you shortly.

If you live overseas and receive a monthly pension and you haven’t received a letter about the annual life certificate exercise from the team, please let us know.

We’ll write to you again shortly with clear instructions on what you’ll need to do and the timescales by which you will need you to respond.

Some FAQs about the overseas pensioner existence exercise are available here.