How we work

Two halves, because there are two kinds of number on this site. First: how we research and verify the pension information in the PensionChart directory. Second: how we work out the figures we show you about your own pensions. Both end with how to tell us when something is wrong.

The difference between them is worth stating plainly, because it is why a country page can say “Verified 20 June 2026” while your own estimate beside it says “Medium confidence”. The first is a fact about a pension system that someone checked against an official source on a date. The second is a figure about you, worked out from what we know about your record — and how sure we are of it depends on what you have given us. Different kinds of knowing, so they carry different labels.

Part one — what we publish about countries

Why this matters

Cross-border pension rules are technical, country-specific, and change over time. People make real decisions based on what they read here — whether to top up a contribution record, when to claim, whether a short stint abroad is worth pursuing. So we hold our country data to a clear, stated standard rather than treating it as generic web content.

Where our information comes from

Our country guides are built from primary, official sources first: the national pension and social-security authorities (for example the UK’s HMRC and DWP, Germany’s Deutsche Rentenversicherung, the US Social Security Administration), the text of bilateral social-security (totalization) agreements and tax treaties, and reputable international bodies such as the OECD and EU. Where a fact traces to a specific authority, we record that source alongside the entry.

How a country guide is produced

We use AI research tools to draft and keep each guide current, working from those official sources. AI drafting lets us cover 47 countries and re-check them far more often than manual research alone would allow — but it never publishes on its own. Every guide is structured into the same fields (retirement ages, scheme structure, contribution rates, eligibility, tax treatment, and claiming from abroad) so it can be compared and reviewed consistently.

How we verify

A country entry is only marked Verified once a member of our team has checked it against the named official source. A verified entry records:

• the official source it was checked against;
• the date of that verification;
• a confidence level reflecting how directly the source supports the entry.

You’ll see this provenance on the country page itself: verified entries carry a “Verified” badge with the source and date, while entries still awaiting human review are labelled as such, so you always know how far a given fact has been checked.

Keeping it current

Pension rules change — retirement ages rise, contribution rates are re-set, and top-up windows open and close. We re-review each country at least once every three months, and prioritise the ones people actually ask about through the Finder. When a rule change is detected, the affected guide is re-drafted and checked by a PensionChart team member against the named official source before its “Verified” date is updated.

Part two — how we work out your figures

Everything above is about pension systems. This half is about the numbers we put next to your name: the monthly amounts on your dashboard, the income projection, and the figures in your report. None of them is a quotation. They are our best working estimate from what we know, and the labels beside each one tell you how much to lean on it.

The words we use on every figure

Every figure carries a short label saying where it came from. There are five, they mean exactly this, and they are the same five on your dashboard, in your PDF report and in an adviser share:

• From your statement — read from a document you uploaded. You haven’t confirmed the reading yet.
• From your statement · confirmed — read from your document, and you checked the figures we pulled out.
• From your statement · corrected by you — as above, but you changed something we had misread. Your version is what we use.
• Based on figures you provided — worked out from something you told us directly, such as your qualifying years, rather than from a document.
• Estimated from country rules — no document and nothing from you, so we applied the country’s published rules to the working history you entered. This is the weakest of the five and the one most worth replacing.

The order matters. A document beats a formula: as soon as a statement gives us a real number for an account, it supersedes anything we had calculated from country rules, and the label changes to say so. Something you tell us directly beats a pure assumption. We never blend the two into one number and present it as a single figure.

What High, Medium and Low actually mean

Alongside the source label, each estimate carries a confidence level. It describes the input, not our optimism:

• High — the figure was stated on your own statement. We read it; we didn’t compute it.
• Medium — computed from country rules, but with a key input you supplied yourself, such as your qualifying years.
• Low — computed from country rules and the working history you entered, with no document and no confirmation. Directional only: it tells you roughly what is at stake and whether the pension is worth chasing, not what you will be paid.

We deliberately don’t roll these up into a single “confidence score” for your whole picture. One number about uncertainty would be false precision, and it would hide the thing that actually helps: which specific pension is still an estimate, and what document would fix it.

How we read your documents

We use AI tools to read uploaded statements — the same framing as our country research above, and with the same limit: nothing is treated as settled because software said so. Extracted figures are shown back to you to confirm or correct before they carry the “confirmed” label, and a field we are unsure of is flagged rather than quietly filled in. Where a newer statement covers the same pension, the newer one wins and the older is kept as a previous version rather than overwritten.

Pots of money, and the ~4%/yr assumption

Some pensions promise an income; others are a balance. To show them on one timeline we have to turn a balance into a monthly figure, and that needs two assumptions we chose ourselves: the pot grows at ~4% per year above inflation until you claim, and you then draw ~4%/yr of it. These are conventional planning assumptions, not a forecast and not a product return. Markets don’t deliver a smooth anything, and a bad first decade of returns changes the answer materially. Treat a projected balance figure as an illustration of scale, not a number to plan a retirement date around.

Guaranteed income, drawdown pots and survivor income stay separated throughout, even though merging them would give a tidier headline. They are different kinds of money with different risks, and adding them together would hide exactly the distinction that matters.

Currencies

Amounts are converted using the European Central Bank’s daily euro reference rates, refreshed at most once a day. Conversions are therefore “as of today”, not the rate on the day you earned the pension or the rate when you eventually claim — and where your pensions are in several currencies, we say so rather than hiding the exposure behind a single converted total. Over a retirement, currency movement can outweigh the differences between the pensions themselves.

What this does not do

Stating the limits is part of the method:

• It is not a tax calculation. Figures are gross unless a page says otherwise. Cross-border pension taxation depends on treaties, residence and timing, and we flag where those interact rather than computing a net number for you.
• It does not model markets. No volatility, no sequence of returns, no product-level charges.
• Depth varies by country. A few countries are modelled in detail from their statutory formulas; most are covered from their published claim ages and scheme structure, which is enough to place a pension on your timeline but not to compute an accrual. Where a country’s system genuinely can’t be estimated without a statement, we say “statement required” instead of producing a number.
• It is not advice, and it is not a claim. Nothing here entitles you to anything. The official record is the only thing that does, and it is always free to request — which is why we publish step-by-step guides for getting it.

The single most useful thing you can do to any figure on this site is replace it with a real statement.

The numbers behind the numbers

For anyone who wants to check our working rather than take it on trust, the statutory values and modelling choices the estimates are built from are published in full, each tagged by what kind of number it is — set by law, observed from an external source, or a modelling choice of ours — with its source and the date it was last confirmed: constants and assumptions. That page is generated from the same values the estimator uses, so it cannot drift away from the product, and an automated test fails if any statutory value goes more than 14 months without being re-confirmed.

Part three — what the dates mean, and what has changed

What “as at” means on a figure

Every figure carries a date, and the date means different things depending on where the figure came from — which is why the label says which. A figure read off a client's statement carries that statement's date: it was true when the scheme wrote it, and we have not independently re-checked it since. A figure computed from a country's rules carries the date a person last verified that country against its official sources. Neither is a guarantee that the number is true today; both tell you exactly how old the basis is, so you can judge that yourself.

A report as a whole also carries the date it reflects. That is the oldest thing about it, not the newest: a report built today from a statement dated two years ago is a two-year-old picture with today's cover on it, and the per-figure dates are what stop that being misleading.

When a rule changes after a figure was produced

We re-verify the country and its verification date moves. A figure computed before that becomes visibly older than the check behind it, which is the signal to recompute — we do not silently restate an old figure as though it had been reviewed. This is the part a one-off report cannot do: a document written before a rule changed has no way of telling anyone which of its lines stopped being true.

What has changed here

Changes to how the figures are produced or labelled, newest first. Statutory values are not listed here — each is dated individually on the constants appendix, which is generated from the values themselves.

Who pays us

Nobody but the people who use PensionChart. We take no commission, no referral fee and no revenue share from any provider, scheme or adviser — set out in full on how we stay independent.

What this is (and isn’t)

PensionChart is an information and organisation tool. Our country guides explain how systems work in general; they are not personal financial, tax, or legal advice, and they can’t account for every individual’s circumstances. For decisions with a deadline or a large sum at stake, confirm the specifics with the relevant official authority or a qualified cross-border adviser. The official route is always free to check.

If we get something wrong

Tell us and we'll fix it. We publish corrections within five working days, in full, dated, and beside the original — never in place of it, so you can see what changed. If we think the correction is wrong, we'll publish both readings and let you decide. Every correction we've made is listed at /corrections.

Tell us if something’s wrong

If you spot something that looks out of date or incorrect, we want to know — corrections from people who’ve dealt with these systems first-hand make the directory better for everyone. Email info@pensionchart.com or use our contact form, and point us to the official source if you have one. You can also suggest an edit directly on any country page.

Last reviewed 29 August 2026. PensionChart is operated by MagicCompany.AI BV, Haarlem, The Netherlands.