Learn more about what documents are needed to apply for a pension

Stages of applying for a pension

You can apply for a pension in one of the following ways:

1. Personal visit to the pension fund branch . The institution can be located either at the place of residence or at the place of stay of the Russian. Moreover, you can even submit an application to a branch located in the place where the person actually lives.
2. Through a trusted person . The power of attorney must be executed at a notary office. Typically, this method of filing an application is chosen if a person has limited mobility or is incapacitated. The representative of the applicant can be any person with citizenship of the Russian Federation.
3. Through the post office . Documents must be sent with a description of the attachment. You must also indicate at the post office that you will be notified that the addressee has received the letter. This method is optimal for Russians who are far from the establishment of the fund. The downside is that if the shipment is missing a certain piece of paper, the citizen will not know about it immediately, but only when he receives a response from the fund. Consequently, the process of assigning payments may take a long time.
4. Account on the fund's website . To use this method you need to register. If a person already has an account on the site, the application process will take a couple of minutes.
5. Through the employer . If the application is submitted through the employer, the citizen does not need to make a power of attorney with a notary.
6. Personal visit to the MFC . Similar institutions exist in almost every city in Russia. The MFC is considered an intermediary between Russians and government agencies. The appointment of payments through the center is free of charge. You can make an appointment in advance by phone or on the center’s website.

Briefly, the procedure for assigning pension benefits can be described as follows:

1. A citizen submits an application and a set of papers using one of the methods described above.
2. Fund employees check the submitted papers. If some documents are missing, the citizen is notified about this by phone, by letter sent through the post office or by e-mail. He can also be notified about this personally if the person himself came to the Pension Fund/MFC.
3. It is being considered whether it is legal to assign a pension to a citizen. A decision is made, of which the applicant is notified.
4. Pension payments are officially assigned. The Russian chooses how he wants to receive money.

How long does it take to apply to the Pension Fund?

It is possible to submit an application either 30 days before the right to pension provision arises, or after this right arises. There is no need to worry that the later you submit your application, the lower your payments will be. The Pension Fund undertakes to provide the Russian with payments in full, regardless of the date of emergence of the right to them. This is approved in Article 8 of Federal Law No. 400.

How to correctly formulate a response to a request to a pension fund

How to correctly formulate the text of a letter to the pension fund if you need to confirm an employee’s maternity leave (in 1984), but the leave orders were destroyed years ago, there is no information in the personal card, but there was no salary payment for the period of maternity leave (1 year)?

A certificate with false information about your salary can also cause a tax, labor, and, in some cases, prosecutorial audit. The difference in salary from the information provided by the employer in reports (pension, tax) and the certificate issued to the employee is grounds to suspect the company of paying unofficial salaries. And, as a result, the reason for conducting various types of inspections, depending on under what circumstances and by which department this difference was identified.

We recommend reading: Calculator for calculating preferential pensions for healthcare workers

Preparing to apply to the Pension Fund

Before contacting a government agency to apply for a pension, check whether you meet 3 conditions (if you are applying for an old-age insurance pension):

1. Reaching retirement age (RA).
2. Minimum work experience (10 years). The increase in the minimum length of service requirements is gradual: in 2021 it will be 10 years and by 2024 it will increase to 15 years.
3. Availability of at least 16.2 individual pension coefficients (IPC). By 2025, the minimum required number of IPCs will increase to 30.

Collection of documents

There should be no problems with collecting documents. Below is a list of what documents are required to apply for a pension.

List of documents

The main documents for registration of pension provision are:

1. Request for payment.
2. Papers that certify age, residential address, and citizenship. The Russian passport is used as a document that confirms identity, age and citizenship. Foreigners and stateless persons apply for a residence permit.
3. Papers confirming experience. The main document that confirms the periods of work of a Russian citizen is the work book. If you do not have a work book or if it contains inaccurate information, you can use:

• written employment contracts, which are drawn up in accordance with the Labor Code of the Russian Federation;
• a civil law agreement, the subject of which is the performance of work or the provision of services; employer's document confirming mandatory payments; act of acceptance and delivery of work;
• extracts issued by employers or government agencies;
• extracts from orders;
• personal accounts, salary statements;
• military ID.

You can also highlight additional papers that are required to certify certain circumstances.

These include documents:

1. About changing your name. Such documents can be a certificate of marriage, a certificate of name change, or a divorce certificate.
2. About the average salary of a deceased breadwinner.
3. About disabled relatives.
4. Certifying that disabled relatives are dependents of the applicant. Confirmation is provided by statements from housing authorities and statements of earnings of all family members.
5. Proof of residence address in the Russian Federation. Typically, the residential address is determined by registration (stamp in the passport or temporary registration form). To confirm the address of actual residence, a personal statement of the Russian is used. It is not necessary to have a residence permit.
6. Proof of residence address abroad. This is established on the basis of documents issued by Russian embassies or consulates. Also, supporting documents can be issued by the competent authorities of another country.
7. Certifying experience in certain types of work. This includes statements that clarify the special nature and conditions of work.
8. About the birth of a child. Such a document is a birth certificate.
9. About caring for a child under 8 years old. The confirmation here is an extract from housing authorities and other papers that contain the necessary information. In some situations, a court order recognizing this fact may be used.
10. Certifying that the minor has been recognized as disabled since childhood or as a disabled child (medical certificate).
11. Confirming that the applicant is a relative of a disabled person since childhood. Confirmation is provided by a birth certificate, adoption certificate, marriage certificate, divorce certificate.
12. About the presence of a disease, which is provided for by subparagraph 5 of paragraph 1 of Article 28 of the Federal Law of December 17, 2001, number 173. A supporting document is issued by a medical institution.
13. About employment in the northern regions and localities that are equivalent to them. To confirm this, you will have to prepare statements from the employer.

Reference! If there are any papers in the pension file, it is not necessary to provide them.

What documents are best prepared in advance?

It is recommended to prepare documents in advance that confirm your disability. It is impossible to say exactly how long it will take to obtain a document certifying the status of a “disabled person,” so it is better to quickly undergo a medical examination.

It is also recommended to take the documents provided by the employer in advance. It may happen that the organization in which you worked for a long time will close, and you will have to spend a lot of time getting the necessary papers.

We generate a certificate of earnings

To calculate a pension, information is needed on the average monthly earnings of the future pensioner. Quite often, the Pension Fund takes this data from its personalized accounting database. For the calculation, data on earnings for 2000-2001, which were submitted as part of personalized reporting during that period, are suitable (Article 30 of Law No. 173-FZ). However, in some cases, the employee will need to prove income. So, he may need a certificate of his earnings for any five consecutive years before January 1, 2002. For such a certificate, he can contact his employer (current or former). The certificate is issued under the following conditions:

• during the confirmed period, the employee worked and received a salary (or if the employer is the legal successor of an already liquidated company);
• the period until the employee is registered as an insured person in the compulsory pension insurance system is confirmed (that is, in fact, until the employee receives a pension insurance certificate).

Please note that it is not at all necessary that the certificate cover a five-year period. If a person often changes jobs, then for a pension he can collect several certificates over short periods from different employers, in order to, as a result, cover 60 months.

If an employee contacts you for such a certificate, it must be issued no later than three days from the date of receipt of the application (Article of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). There is no single form of certificate, so you can create it in any form.

Is there a difference in the list for men and women?

The list of documents required to assign a pension is practically the same for women and men. The only difference is the document confirming the status of a single mother (if it affects the size of the pension).

Applying for an old-age or other pension is not such a difficult process if you know what is required to successfully complete it. It is better to understand in advance how a pension is assigned, so as not to spend a lot of time on its registration in the future.

We arrange a pension for an employee

The time for consideration of an application by the Pension Fund should not exceed 10 working days. To assign payments from the date of retirement age, we recommend that the future pensioner contact the Pension Fund a week before his birthday.

How to increase your pension

In addition to doctors and teachers, workers in creative activities (in theatrical and entertainment organizations) have the right to receive early pension payments. For them, the old law established requirements for special experience depending on the type of work - from 15 to 30 years. The new law provides for a similar increase in age for them to 55-60 years, respectively. The change for them will also occur in stages, with an annual increase of 1 year.

Mothers of three can retire at 57, three years earlier than the new retirement age. But if in 2021 such a mother turned 57 years old, it means that her right to a pension, even without benefits, arose at the age of 55 - before the pension reform, in 2021. She can already receive a pension from any day of 2021, if she has not yet applied for it. So having many children in 2021 does not give her any relief yet.

Let's say Valentina Ivanovna was born on March 10, 1966. She turns 55 on March 10, 2021. Under the old rules, she could retire on the same day - March 10, 2021. But taking into account the reform, her retirement age was raised by 3 years, that is, she will begin to receive payments from the budget only from March 10, 2024. Then she will be 58 years old.

How will the retirement age change?

If a woman turned 56 years old or a man turned 61 years old in 2021, but they are still working, they already have the right to an old-age pension. They might not use it for various reasons, but they can do it at any time: both in the first and second half of 2021 - or later, whenever they want.

Third - in 2021 - 18.6 individual pension coefficient (points). (The requirement for a maximum of 30 points is being introduced gradually, with subsequent annual increases of 2.4 until the specified value is reached by 2025).

We recommend reading: Penza working day from what time

— workers who have the necessary preferential length of service for working in difficult and dangerous working conditions; — those who worked in the Far North or equivalent areas; — teachers and medical workers with teaching (25 years) or medical (30 years) experience; - mothers of many children who gave birth and raised five or more children up to the age of eight (they acquire the right to a pension at 50 years of age); - mothers (or fathers) who raised a disabled child from childhood (they have the right to retire five years earlier than the generally established age: women at 50 years old, men at 55 years old).

Early retirement

For those who were supposed to retire in 2021–2021, a special benefit is provided - retirement six months earlier than the new retirement age. Thus, a person who will have to retire in January 2021 will be able to do so in July 2021.

The organization is obliged to issue the employee, upon his application, the original work book for the purpose of assigning a pension. In this case, a maximum of three working days after submitting the work book to the Pension Fund of Russia unit, the employee is obliged to return it (Article 62 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation).