Pension freeze: who will be left without money?

Starting in 2025, Ukraine will introduce new requirements for accruing pensions to citizens who are abroad for a long time or do not use their bank accounts.

From now on, all pensioners are required to undergo a physical identification procedure annually; otherwise, their financial payments may be temporarily suspended. The Pension Fund clarified this.

Financial organizations create monthly reports on those clients who have confirmed their identity and transfer this information to the Pension Fund. If a pensioner does not pass identification by the end of the year, from January 1 of the following year, their card account will be blocked, and the funds will be sent to special storage. It is important to note that the money does not disappear, but falls into the “stop list” and awaits confirmation of the identity.

The most significant probability of blocking payments exists for:

– Ukrainians who are abroad for a long time;

– internally displaced persons;

– residents of temporarily occupied regions;

– pensioners who have not carried out transactions with their cards for more than a year.

To restore payments, you must be identified in one of the following ways:

– at a bank branch;

– at the Pension Fund service center;

– through online services such as “Diya ID”.

After successful identification, the funds will be returned in full, but only for the period of their storage in the fund. If identity verification has not occurred within a certain number of months, payments during this time may be lost, so timely confirmation is critically essential.

Earlier, the news reported on which pensioners will be able to receive almost 17,000 hryvnias, as well as on the new formula for calculating pensions, which will affect payments. In addition, it was noted that an error in the documents may lead to a refusal to pay a pension.