In 2018, the outstanding amount of unliquidated retirement savings contracts at age 65 was estimated at… 5.4 billion euros. Money placed for retirement, but not claimed. Make it easy for everyone to know if they have such financial products and how to contact the insurer to release the funds: this was therefore the objective of the law on the escheat of supplementary pension contracts, adopted in February 2021.
An objective about to be achieved, since since July 6, this information can, in large part, now be consulted at any age on the “retirement account”, via the inter-regime portal. Info-retraite.fr or on the linked mobile application, indicates the Retirement Union, the organization responsible for developing information on pensions and facilitating the process.
The retirement account is a service introduced at the end of 2016. Everyone can create their own to access various information and procedures concerning their own retirement, whether future or already liquidated. For example, it is possible, via this tool, to make a single pension request online, to consult one’s pension rights, to simulate one’s pensions, or even, if one is already retired, to consult one’s payments. The site now has a new tab, devoted to retirement savings.
This new feature affects both individual contracts – for example the old Madelin contracts (reserved for non-employees), the old popular retirement savings plans (PERP) or the new individual retirement savings plans (Perin) –, such as those taken out via the company, such as the old collective retirement savings plan (Perco) or the so-called “article 83” contracts (which the company finances for the employee).
Identification of beneficiaries in progress
“Many beneficiaries do not liquidate their contracts, especially for collective contracts, taken out by the employer for his employees and of which the latter are not always aware”, explained to World in 2021 Stéphane Bonnet, the director of the Union pension. “ We sign a lot of papers when we join or leave a company, we do not necessarily pay attention to information on supplementary retirement. »
Admittedly, the managers of retirement savings contracts (insurers, mutuals, etc.) “already had the obligation to inform beneficiaries of retirement age every year”but “they rarely have the right addresses, letters get lost, policyholders don’t report their moves”he continued.
One downside, however: “most of the information” has been forwarded to the Retirement Union by the insurers, as required by law, but not all of them for the moment. As of July 7, the database thus has approximately 13 million retirement savings contracts out of the 14.3 million total contracts not settled, details the organization. And for the information transmitted by the insurers, the identification of the beneficiaries of the contracts is still sometimes in progress, for 20% of them.
Results : “If the beneficiary thought he had a contract but nothing appears on the online service, it is possible that the information has not yet been transmitted or that the beneficiary has not been identified. You will have to come back to consult your retirement account later”, recommends the Retirement Union in a press release. A communication campaign aimed at the general public is planned for the start of the school year.