On 29 October 2024 in Vienna, the Republic of Srpska Pension and Disability Insurance Fund signed the Agreement on Electronic Data Exchange with the Austrian Pension Fund (PVA) and Deutsche Post.

The purpose of the agreement is to facilitate greatly the operation of these two pension insurance providers, and to simplify the procedure and ease the access to fund services for the citizens benefiting from pension rights in the Republic of Srpska and Austria.

The most important for citizens, pension right beneficiaries, is that they will no longer be required to send regularly life certificates, because the fact of death of a pension right beneficiary in Austria or the Republic of Srpska will be exchanged electronically once a month, immediately before the processing of pensions.

In the future, the funds will not be obliged to receive, process and archive about 9,000 documents in the form of life certificate that the right beneficiaries/pensioners of both funds had to file in December of the current year in order to continue receiving their pensions in the following year.

Namely, 2,160 right beneficiaries of our Fund live in the territory of the Republic of Austria, and about 6,500 PVA right beneficiaries live in the territory of the Republic of Srpska. Until now, all of them had to have their life certificates certified by one of the pension insurance providers, diplomatic and consular missions of BiH or Austria, in local community administrations, and often also with a notary. All this required allocating a certain amount of time, paying relevant fees and, naturally, paying for the postal services of sending life certificates to the specific pension insurance provider. Now it will no longer be necessary, because the fact of death of a right beneficiary in Austria or the Republic of Srpska will be exchanged electronically once a month, immediately before the processing of pensions.

On the other hand, with this Agreement both funds save time, human resources, archiving space and considerable financial resources required for operational work.

According to the PIO RS Fund, considering the Austrian pension system legislation, the data on proportionate pension levels will also be exchanged so that lower-income PVA right beneficiaries receive a compensation allowing their standard of living to improve.

The Republic of Srpska Pension and Disability Insurance Fund pays 56,400 pensions outside the Republic of Srpska in 32 countries on five continents.

The preparation for signing of such agreement with the German pension fund is being finalized, after which only about 2,500 beneficiaries of our Fund rights out of the total of 56,400 will still have to submit life certificates.

This is a mere continuation of the PIO RS Fund’s successful business cooperation with PVA that is already working on full digitization and electronic exchange of data and documents in the process of exercising the right to pension and pension payment.

Source and photo: Republic of Srpska Representative Office in the Republic of Austria