As of May 1, 2021, the Swiss Compensation Office in Geneva (SCO) will again require an official life certificate confirmed by the authorities. This procedure of life certification is intended for the Swiss abroad. As a rule, only Swiss citizens should go to the Swiss representations. All other nationalities should contact their own representation or municipality of residence.
If this is not possible due to the current COVID situation in Japan (e.g. difficulties in visiting the relevant authorities), the life certificates can be confirmed by the insured persons themselves by means of their own signature (without the stamp of the authorities). In this case, we ask the insured to enclose a copy of the valid passport or identity card as well as a witness confirmation with the certificate. The life certificates can be sent to the Swiss Compensation Fund in the form of a PDF by e-mail to sedmaster@zas.admin.ch or in the original by normal mail.
The witness confirmation can be formulated as follows:
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I, __________________________________ (name/first name of witness), confirm that Mr./Mrs. ____________________________________________ (name/first name of insured) is alive.
Complete address of witness: __________________________________________________
Date: ______________________________________________________________________
Signature: __________________________________________________________________
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In principle, all persons of legal age and capacity are eligible as witnesses. The witness confirmation must be submitted in one of the three Swiss national languages or in English.
The witness confirmation should ideally be handwritten directly on the form or printed out (signature by hand, of course).
If the insured wishes to extend the 90-day deadline for submitting the life certificate because it is imminent, they must notify the OASI directly, as failure to receive the document will result in automatic deferral of payment.
The requests concerning the extension of the deadline and the life certificates can be sent to the following e-mail address: sedmaster@zas.admin.ch. In urgent cases, the SCO can also be reached by phone at +41 58 461 91 11.
Ideally, insured persons should use the original form that they receive annually from the Swiss Compensation Office, which is provided with a barcode. This eliminates the need for subsequent manual processing at the Swiss Compensation Office and is correspondingly faster.
