Reference pay

You were born on or after 1 January 1962?

(new general rule)

The reference pay, that serves as the basis for your pension calculation, is the average wage of:

• the ten last years of your career;
  or
• your full career if your career is shorter than ten years.

We determine the reference pay on the basis of the salary scale you were appointed in.

• If you, during the ten last years of your career, held a position in which you were not appointed, but were appointed in another position, we will only take the wages of the office you were appointed in into account.
  
  
• If the reference period contains contractual or temporary years of service, we take these wages into account. However, these cannot exceed the wages of the salary scales of the office in which you were afterwards appointed.
  
  
• We consider your work placement to be a period in which you were appointed.
  
  

You were born before 1 January 1962?

(Transitional measure)

In that case, the reference pay is the average wage of:

• your five last career years;
  or
• of your full career if it does not count five years.

Exceptions to the new general rule:

• we recalculate your pension on the basis of the average wage of your five last career years if:
  • we take the average wage of your ten last career years or of your full career if it counts more than five but fewer than ten years into account for your pension calculation
    and
  • your pension amount falls below the guaranteed minimum amount for a single pensioner.
    
    
• if you were retired due to physical incapacity, we calculate the guaranteed minimum amount on the basis of the average wage of your five last years of service.
  
  
• some pensions were, before the reform, calculated on the basis of the last wage or on the basis of a reference pay of fewer than five years. If you were born on or after 1 January 1962, we calculate your pension on the basis of the reference pay of your four last years of service (for example in the case of the Belgian railways) or on the basis of your full career if it is shorter than four years.
  
  

Are my wage supplements taken into account for my reference pay?

For the determination of the reference pay, we also take some wage supplements into account which you received during the five or ten last years of your career.

The remunerative status

For an immediate retirement pension or a pension due to the age limit:

we determine the average wage on the basis of the remunerative status that applies on the start date of your pension.

For a deferred retirement pension:

• if you stop working on or after 1 January 2007:
  1. we determine your pension on the basis of the remunerative status that is of application on the first day of the month following your work termination.
  2. we apply the rates of increase that were awarded between your work termination and the start date of your pension on the basis of the biennial adaptation basket your pension is tied to.
     
     
• if you stopped working before 1 January 2007:
  1. we use the remunerative status that was of application on 1 January 2007.
  2. we apply the rates of increase that were awarded between your work termination and the start date of your pension on the basis of the biennial adaptation basket your pension is tied to.