Apply for Your Pension Benefits
Customer Service Alert
Thank you for your patience while we respond to the current high volume of benefit estimates requests. At this time:
- Benefit estimates for those currently eligible to retire will be prioritized, but the process may still take up to 45 days to complete.
- If you are not eligible to begin payments now or if you are requesting an estimate for future retirement planning, your estimate request may take up to six months to fulfill.
To help us respond to all customer requests, please ask for estimates for no more than two retirement dates within a six-month period.
To help prevent duplicate requests and expedite processing, please submit your request either by using MyPBA, our secure online service, or by calling our Customer Contact Center at 1-800-400-7242. If you do submit it via MyPBA, you do not need to follow up with the call center.
Things to remember about applying for benefits:
- You can apply for a pension if:
- you are now eligible or will be eligible within the next 180 days to receive benefits from PBGC, under the provisions of your pension plan; and
- you would like to begin receiving your retirement benefit within the next 180 days.
- Before you apply for your benefit, you must request an estimate of your benefit amount. The estimate will tell you how much your benefit would be under each possible form of benefit available to you on the date you want your benefits to start.
- PBGC will contact you if you are missing any "proof documents" (e.g., a birth certificate) that are required to complete your application.
- Note: if you are applying as a beneficiary of a deceased participant, please go to beneficiary application for benefits.
How to apply:
- Use our online service to apply.
OR - Call PBGC's Customer Contact Center to request an application for pension benefits.
- Call at 1-800-400-7242. For TTY/ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) users, call the federal relay service toll-free at 1-800-877-8339 and ask to be connected to the number above.
- Remember to have your Social Security or customer ID number, plan name, and case number ready for the customer service representative so that they are better able to help you.
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