Your AOW accrual stops on departure — and you have one year to repair that

You build up the AOW (the Dutch state pension) by living or working in the Netherlands: 2% a year, for fifty years. If you leave, that accrual usually stops immediately — and every year abroad later becomes a 2% reduction of your AOW. Whoever emigrates at forty and never returns easily misses a quarter to half of the amount they unknowingly count on. This isn't a penalty; it's simply how accrual works. But it deserves a conscious decision instead of a discovery at 67.

The repair: voluntary continued insurance

The SVB offers a voluntary continuation: you pay the premium yourself and simply keep building up as if you never left. The rules of the game:

• Sign up within one year of departure. This is the hard deadline of this article — after that the door is closed, for good.
• You must have been insured for at least one continuous year immediately before departure — for whoever emigrates from an ordinary Dutch life that's automatically the case.
• It's possible for a maximum of ten years (longer only in special cases, such as working for the Dutch government abroad).

What it costs, and when it pays off

The premium depends on income: 17.9% of your income, with in 2026 a minimum of € 569 and a maximum of € 5,693 a year. That's where the trade-off sits. Whoever has little or no income of their own abroad — the accompanying partner is the classic example — pays the minimum premium and buys with it every year 2% of permanent, indexed AOW. In many cases that's one of the cheapest pension purchases there is. Whoever sits against the premium maximum calculates more sharply: then the continuation competes with investing yourself or the pension of your new country.

For a few euros a year you also insure the Anw with it — the survivor's cover. A small amount, and for single-income families worth considering.

The accompanying partner is also the classic victim of this scheme: the main earner sometimes keeps building up via a secondment, the partner doesn't — and nobody says so. Decide this per person, not per household, and put the sign-up deadline (one year after departure) in the calendar today.

This is a sum that depends on your age, your accrual years and your plans — Vertrekklaar tells you when it comes up, a pension adviser or the SVB's calculators tell you what it yields for you.