According to Lusa, Swiss Federal Audit Office625,000 Swiss pension funds had 5 billion euros “forgotten” belonging to foreign nationals of various nationalities who worked there.
This is due to changes in Swiss law that introduced the second pillar of social security (compulsory occupational pensions) in 1985, aimed at supplementing workers’ retirement benefits.
However, each time there was a change in the mobility of workers, such as going to a new company, losing their job, or returning to their home country, funds had to be transferred from one fund to another, which was not done and the amount remained in some boxes. , without workers claiming them.
Renata Santos, head of the company in Portugal, told Lusa that since 2021, around 1,000 Portuguese immigrants have registered on the platform to find out whether there is money in these boxes. Ta.
He said more than a third (about 35%) had already been able to get some money back, with a total of 1 million euros recovered.
He said the value found varies between 150 and 20,000 euros in individual cases.
The company will only charge a service fee if it discovers the amount to be recovered and, according to Renata Santos, it needs to know the amount, which should be around 13 billion euros, higher than the 5 billion euros originally paid in advance. Nor.
Switzerland is the third country in the world with the largest number of Portuguese immigrants, after Spain and the United Kingdom. In 2021, the country was again the country with the highest number of Portuguese immigrants acquiring citizenship, according to an immigration report released in January this year.
More than 255,000 Portuguese people live in Switzerland, making them the third largest foreign community after Italians and Germans.