Living Overseas

If you live abroad your benefits can either be paid to a bank account in the UK or direct into an overseas bank account. 

Your Fund benefits are accrued in £sterling and will generally be paid in £sterling into a UK bank account.  The Trustee offers Fund members the opportunity to ask for their benefits to be paid overseas in local currency.  The Fund’s overseas payment facility is currently provided by Convera (previously known as Western Union).  

Convera overseas payment facility  

Convera provides a fee free service, which makes benefit payments in local currency with a margin placed on their exchange rates. This margin takes account of the following: 

• All banking charges for sending payments are absorbed by Convera 
• No charges are passed on for investigations and returned payments 
• No wire payment fees are applied 
• Expert support teams deliver overseas payments with a higher success rate than banks 
• Customer support and payments experts make sure that payments reach members’ accounts by ensuring account information is up-to-date. All new members’ bank details are verified and checked to ensure first-time delivery 
• Any payments that do not reach members’ accounts are corrected and re-issued at no extra cost 

So, the exchange rates applied by Convera make allowance for the additional services they provide on an all-inclusive basis.   

For overseas payments it is important that the information provided is complete and accurate and that all of the information requested on the payment mandate is provided in full, otherwise this may lead to delays in the payment reaching your account. 

A payment mandate form is available to download from the forms section below, we suggest that you ask your bank to verify that the account and payment routing details are correct. 

Country names and currency codes are provided in the list below, which need to be filled in at the top of the mandate form. If your country is not listed below, please visit the XE website to find out your currency code. 

If you are changing your bank account please do not close your existing account until your first pension payment has been credited to your new account.