With the raising of the legal retirement age and the increase in the duration of insurance, many French people feared that the age of the full automatic rate would disappear. However, despite legitimate concerns, the executive has chosen not to modify this condition of access to full retirement by maintaining the age of the automatic full rate. From the age of 67, each retiree will therefore be able to continue to benefit from their full pension when they reach their full rate age. However, this rather positive decision contains subtleties to know, in particular on the final amount of your pension. Decryption.
To receive a basic pension at the full rate from Social Security, without suffering a discount, it is necessary to contribute a specific number of quarters of pension insurance. These amount to 166 months, or 41 years and one semester for people born between 1955 and 1957, or 172 quarters, or 43 years. Indeed, following the recent adoption of the pension reform, the French concerned, that is to say people born from 1965, will have to contribute 43 annuities to benefit from the full rate.
If you choose to retire before the age of 67 without having contributed the required number of years, the rate used to calculate your retirement pension is reduced. For example, in the private sector, the full rate is set at 50% of the average gross salary for the best 25 years. This rate will ultimately be less than 50% if you do not reach the age or the number of quarters required for the full rate.
When you retire before having contributed the necessary number, you suffer a discount. For a missing quarter, the retirement rate is therefore 49.375%: you should know that each missing quarter reduces the rate applied to your pension by 0.625 points. For five years of contributions less, your rate goes from 50% to 37.5%.
The system currently in force therefore makes it possible to limit the effects of the discount. It thus offers the possibility of having your basic pension granted at the full rate, regardless of your number of validated quarters, in the event of retirement at age 67. An advantage that remains preserved despite the adoption of the new pension reform.
Despite this good news, however, you must be careful not to mix up the full rate and the maximum rate. It is, in fact, possible to receive a full pension without benefiting from the maximum rate. Thus, the amount of your basic pension is based both on the average gross salary of the best 25 years and the number of quarters of the pension insurance.
For example, with an average annual gross salary of 30,000 euros, you must validate 168 quarters to obtain a full pension. However, retiring at age 67 with only 162 quarters, your full pension will be lower according to the calculation rule “Average gross annual salary x 50% x 162/168”. A difference of 45 euros per month will therefore be visible for a contribution of 6 quarters less than the 168 required for a pension at the maximum rate.
