Like other social benefits, retirement pensions are not paid automatically. To receive your pension, you must request it and do so in advance: at least six months before the desired date for public service plans, and at the latest four months for private sector plans. The procedures have been simplified, since it is no longer necessary to send a separate request to each of the funds to which you have contributed.
You can now make a single request online – unless it is a request for progressive retirement, for which you must always use a paper form – on the site Retirement Info and attach the requested supporting documents electronically. To connect, simply use your France Connect credentials.
If you have not already done so, you will first need to create a “personal retirement account” to access the application procedure. Most of your information is already pre-populated, you just have to validate it.
This single request allows you to assert all your rights at the same time with all French pension funds – basic plans and supplementary plans – to which you have been affiliated during your career. It is not possible to separate the payment dates of the different pensions; if you have contributed to several schemes, you must pay all your pensions at the same time.
Excessive delays
Once your request has been sent, each of your funds will then contact you again – by e-mail and/or by post – to acknowledge receipt of your file. Because although there is a single application procedure, each regime will process your file independently of the others. For example, if you have been an employee, you will have two contacts: retirement insurance for your basic pension and Agirc-Arrco for your supplementary pension.
To follow the progress of your file, it is in your best interest to connect – by creating a personal account for each fund – to the website of the different schemes which must pay you a pension. And it is not uncommon for each of them to request the same supporting documents again, and several times… even though you had attached them to your initial single request.
Unanswered letters, abnormally long processing times, errors in counting the insurance period… the path of future retirees is strewn with pitfalls, as summarized by the testimony of an Internet user posted on the site Public services+February 3: “The lack of information is particularly problematic. No information on the reasons for these excessive delays is communicated to interested parties who do not know whether they should simply wait, whether there is a problem with their file and, in this case, whether action is expected on their part. It is also impossible to contact the people in charge of your file, the retirement insurance services by telephone are of no use since they do not have access to the information. Their only response: we request a relaunch of your current file. Requesters are often told that they will be called back, but this is not done. »
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