Questions and answers regarding the 2025 life certificate

You may not have received payment of your pension for the following reasons:

  • If you completed the Digital Proof of Life process after Friday, October 18, 2024, there may be an overlap between internal processing and transmission of the results data from POSTIDENT to Renten Service.
  • If you completed the Digital Proof of Life process after Friday, October 18, 2024, there may be an overlap between the date on which the reminder letter was sent and the date on which the results data were submitted by POSTIDENT to Renten Service.
  • You have not yet fully completed the identification process with POSTIDENT and Renten Service has not yet received a results file.
    Please check the status in the POSTIDENT app.
  • You are required to provide proof of life for more than one pension. In this case, you will have received a separate adjustment notification with a Digital Proof of Life letter for each pension.
  • You accidentally used the personal QR code belonging to another pension beneficiary. Renten Service is unable to subsequently correct the mistake or correctly allocate the results files.

If you do not respond to the reminder by October 17, 2025, your pension payments will be suspended as of November 30. Pension payments will not resume until you submit a life certificate.

If you submit your life certificate to us in a timely fashion shortly thereafter, your payments can be quickly resumed and all outstanding payments will be transferred to you.

Renten Service will otherwise return the payment order for your pension to your insurance provider. Should resumption of payment be necessary after that, you must contact your insurance provider. The address of your pension insurance provider can be found on your pension notice or your pension adjustment notification.

Detailed information about the 2025 Digital Proof of Life option can be found online at www.rentenservice.de/DLN

Click here

The following bodies are regularly approved for certification

  • All public authorities, such as the police, municipalities (registration offices, mayor's offices)
  • German representatives abroad (embassies, consulates)
  • Financial institutions
  • Hospitals
  • Health insurance providers
  • Notaries
  • Parish offices, rabbinates
  • Polyclinics
  • Pension insurance providers
  • Red Cross

 

Country-specific bodies:

  • Argentina Associacion Filantropica Israelita (AFI), Associacion Mutal Israelita de Argentina (AMIA), Deutsche Wohltätigkeitsgemeinschaft (DWG)
  • Denmark Bund Deutscher Nordschleswiger (BDN)
  • United Kingdom: Physicians, Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), National branch of the Seliger-Gemeinde, German YMCA, German Welfare Council
  • Israel Association of Israelis of Central European Origin (Irgun-Jeckes)
  • Canada: E.P.A.S.A. (social service agency for Italian tradespeople)
  • Paraguay: Freiwilliges Deutsches Sozialwerk (FDS - voluntary German social service)
  • Peru: German-Peruvian benefit society, Mr. Andreas Mossier
  • USA: German Society of the City of New York

Please return the original life certificate form by letter mail to Renten Service by October 17, 2025. The form must be signed personally by you and certified by an authorized institution.

  • Deutsche Post AG
  • Niederlassung Renten Service
  • 04078 Leipzig, GERMANY

Alternatively, you can complete the Digital Proof of Life procedure. It's fast and reliable. It also means you no longer have to return the completed life certificate form.

PLEASE NOTE: Submissions by e-mail and fax will not be accepted.

If you have not yet provided proof of life in 2025 - either through the life certificate form or the Digital Proof of Life process - you still have until October 17, 2025, to do so.

Detailed information about the 2025 Digital Proof of Life option can be found online at www.rentenservice.de/DLN

No. Submissions by e-mail and fax will not be accepted.

We are technically networked with numerous countries in such a way that we do not require annual proof of life. 

If your pension adjustment notification does not include a proof-of-life request for 2024, you do not need to take any further action this year.

If you, as the pension recipient, are unable to write and thus cannot complete the life certificate yourself,

  • this must be confirmed in Section C1 of the life certificate

If the pension beneficiary is unable to speak to a competent authority in person for health reasons,

  • this must be confirmed in Section C1 of the life certificate and
  • the name of the person who visited the authorized institution on behalf of the pension beneficiary must be given in Section C2

We are very sorry that you have lost a loved one and we do not wish to cause you any more inconvenience than necessary.

If you or the funeral directors have already notified us that the person entitled to the pension has died, then your notification and our dispatch of the adjustment, including the request for the annual proof of life, have overlapped. You do not need to do anything else.
If this is not the case, please complete the "Change Notification: Certificate of Life" and send it to:

For pensioners who reside in Germany
Deutsche Post AG
Niederlassung Renten Service
13497 Berlin

For pensioners who do not reside in Germany
Deutsche Post AG
Niederlassung Renten Service
13496 Berlin

You will find the form here Chance Notification: Certificate of Life

Alternatively, please fill out Section C3 of the life certificate form and return it together with a copy of the death certificate.

Deutsche Post AG's Renten Service regularly checks on behalf of your insurance provider that you continue to meet the requirements to receive payments (in accordance with section 119 of Book 6 of the German Social Security Code - SGB VI).

Country-specific institutions:

  • Argentina: Associacion Filantropica Israelita (AFI), Associacion Mutal Israelita de Argentina (AMIA), Deutsche Wohltätigkeitsgemeinschaft (DWG)
  • Denmark: Bund Deutscher Nordschleswiger (BDN)
  • United Kingdom: Physicians, Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), Landesgruppe der Seliger-Gemeinde, German YMCA, German Welfare Council
  • Israel: Association of Israelis of Central European Origin (Irgun-Jeckes)
  • Canada: E.P.A.S.A. (social service agency for Italian tradespeople)
  • Paraguay: Freiwilliges Deutsches Sozialwerk (FDS - voluntary German social service)
  • Peru: German-Peruvian benefit society, Andreas Mossier
  • USA: German Society of the City of New York

In isolated cases, authorized institutions may refuse to certify the life certificate form sent by Renten Service. That is usually because it was not produced in the official language of the country in question. In this case, you can additionally download the form in the country-specific official language (27 languages available) and present it together with the form sent by Renten Service.

An overview of all available forms can be found at the online at https://www.rentenservice.de/LB/Formblatt

You can request alternative access for the Digital Proof of Life process using our request form.  

Link to request form

To request access, you need a valid e-mail address to which the alternative access data can be sent. As soon as you have received the access data, you can begin the identification process.

Alternatively, you can use the life certificate form. The 2025 life certificate form is available at https://www.rentenservice.de/LB/Formblatt

We are technically networked with numerous countries in such a way that we do not require annual proof of life. 

If your pension adjustment notification does not include a proof-of-life request for the current year, you do not need to take any further action that year.