potfish

Hi

I am a UK citizen now naturalised in the US, but spent a few years working in France from 2001-2005. I've been trying to find out what old pensions are knocking around from my former countries.

Now that I have things underway with understanding the UK State Pension, I do not know where to start with my years in France. I know that a lot of deductions were taken from my pay (how could you miss it...) but no longer recall what they all were. There were so many!

If anyone could give me a link to any good resources for me to start untangling what I have and if there's any point in investigating (it may be that I simply don't have enough years to get a penny back) I would appreciate it. For what it's worth I do have my final Bulletin de Paie, and the Attestation Destinee a L'Assedic that came with it, but that's about all the paperwork that remains. I have in recent years tried to get somewhere with AGIRC, ARRCO, CRICA and their websites but not having any presence in France, I was unable to make any headway.

Many thanks.

dmu

Hi, just to clarify, the deductions were for "social contributions" (healthcare, pension, unemployment, ....), not income tax. The PAYE system which is now in force didn't exist in those days...
The CRICA has changed its name and every one seems to come under AGIRC-ARRCO now. Try contacting them on Agirc-Arrco : Retraite complémentaire des salariés du secteur privé, giving your French S.S. number. Likewise the regional CARSAT for your State Pension.
Be aware that you can't apply for your French Pension until you've done the necessary "trimestres" to qualify for it. When I applied, they automatically found my employment history in the UK which was added to my years in France, but I appreciate that you're in the US and the "European" procedure might not be applicable.
Anyway, first contact the CARSAT and AGIRC-ARRCO, giving your French S.S. number and any other references you find on your payslips. You'll probably only get peanuts for the short time you worked in France (I worked a little longer in the UK than you in France, and my UK Pension is so small that it's only transferred quarterly), but little brooks make great rivers....
Good luck with this inevitable bureaucracy!

potfish

Thanks for the pointers. I should have mentioned in my original post that I did work ~15 years in the UK before moving to the US, so that should hopefully allow me to qualify for some things in France. I understand that the amounts will be small if I qualify for anything, but it will all help.

I'll summarize here any progress I make in case it's useful to anyone else that searches in future.

potfish

I successfully registered on L'Assurance Retraite. During sign-up they were happy to take my US address and so on. I can see my relevé de carrière showing 20 trimestres for the years I was there. All looks correct.

I was then able to use the Simulateur on info-retraite.fr which is forecasting a sum which is not going to change my retirement, but is well worth the effort of claiming. It cryptically says: "Ce montant minimum peut être réduit en cas de carrière incomplète (si le nombre de trimestres requis n’est pas atteint)", the minimum can be reduced in case I don't have enough trimestres, but then there's another page that says that these factors are already figured in.

I note that they say you can only ask for corrections to be made once you're 55 - I'm impressed by this rule, it must save them a ton of unnecessary work.

I think I will leave it there and pick it up again when I am 55 or even closer to 62. The fact that I was able to reconnect to the system, see what is there and that it's worth something, and give them my current contact details is more than I had hoped to achieve at this point.

Thanks again dmu for the help!

cyrian

@ potfish
Yes dmu is one of our more helpful members.

dmu

You're welcome!
Were you a "cadre"? The AGIRC-ARRCO site should still indicate what to do about applying for your "Retraite Complémentaire", cadre or not...

rich06

Interesting information here thanks!

Did you have to use the FranceConnect method to access the site? I worked in France between 1993 and 2000 but I now live in the UK and it seems using France Connect is mandatory but that requires an active account with the Impots or the Assurance Maladie - or am I missing something here?

nicktonight

I am at last receiving my basic French state pension from the Assurance Retraite. 3 points are worth mentioning. If you live in Europe you have to get the pension organisation in your country of residence to make your application for you and must of course justify 20 years of activity somewhere. From the date of making my state pension application until the day I received my first payment was 18 months (they tell you that it will be 3 months) during which time you receive absolutely no news. They only write to you by post. After moving to Italy I received a "simulation" of my future pension from the Assurance Retraite every year for 10 years but the sum I am actually receiving is less than half the promised sum and I don't really understand why! It may be because I only worked about 12 years in France. As the simulated state pension was lower than the minimum they may have added a "top-up" that does not in fact apply as I have a pension outside France. It might be worth checking the promised sum on one of the web simulators. Although the state pension procedure was a nightmare all my complementary pension providers were excellent and everything was organized in literally 5 minutes with no bad surprises.

potfish

That's the same problem I have. I can't connect to the AGIRC-ARRCO site without FranceConnect, so I will need to summon up the courage to contact them another way. But the L'Assurance Retraite site did not need FranceConnect. I could create an account and log in using my social security number, name, DOB etc. and in there it told me the expected amounts for both state pension and AGIRC-ARRCO.

(truncated)
Interesting info from nicktonight and not very surprising.

I'll see if I can get in touch with AGIRC-ARRCO and get in to see what's what in there.