An important notice is coming to pensioners and it is better not to underestimate it, penalty: the loss of the monthly check.
There is a fundamental deadline for a large number of Italian pensioners, it is July 18th and the real risk is of losing the monthly allowance if you do not respond to INPS requests by that date. Let’s talk about message no. 4071 of 16 November, in which the INPS provided the indications to avoid losing the right to the pension earned with so much effort after a lifetime of work.
In essence, the INPS wants to know if the pensioners are still alive and if it does not receive a response, it automatically cancels the monthly support, as is done with those who are no longer alive. But the letter arriving from INPS is not for everyone and not everyone has to answer this embarrassing question. Here’s who it’s aimed at.
If you don’t respond to this letter from INPS you will lose your pension: who is at risk
As anticipated, not all pensioners they risk losing their monthly allowance. Indeed, to be honest, the minority of those entitled are at risk if they do not respond to the INPS requests by proving that they are “alive”. We are talking about those who receive an Italian pension but live abroad. In Italy the problem does not exist: when the pensioner’s death certificate arrives, the INPS suspends the payment of the monthly allowance and then we will talk, where necessary, about calculating reversibility pensions for survivors. For those who live abroad everything is less easy.
INPS proceeds in these cases with a periodic verification of existence via a message sent by post. In this case, the Citibank bank takes care of this and is the one responsible for paying Italian pensioners who live abroad. The checks are carried out based on the geographical area in which you live, with different deadlines. The most pressing (July 18) concerns those who live in America, Asia, the Far East, Scandinavian countries and Eastern European states and neighboring countries.
What happens to those who don’t make the switch? The August pension will have to be collected in cash at the Western Union agencies located in the country of residence and if this does not happen then the payment of the pension will be suspended starting from the September 2024 instalment. Then it will be the turn of everyone else, i.e. Italian residents in Europe, Africa and Oceania. For them, the assessments will start after the INPS letters are sent in September 2024 and the deadline will be January 2025. If there is no response, the procedure is the same as in the first case: the February installment must be collected in person at a Western agency Union, otherwise the pension will be suspended from March. To prove that you are alive you simply need to reply to the letter you will receive from Citybank.
But there is an important clause: for the answer model to be valid, the signature of an acceptable witness is required, who must be a representative of an Italian embassy or consulate, or in any case a local authority authorized to endorse the signature of the attestation.
