Two men retire to Chiang Mai in the same year, on state pensions of the same starting size. One is British, one is American. A decade later the American is drawing the same pension plus ten years of compounded cost-of-living increases, paid into a Thai bank in full. The Briton is drawing the exact figure he started with, to the penny, because the United Kingdom froze his State Pension the day his address became Thai and will never raise it again. Same town, same starting number, same decade. The only variable that produced the gap is the passport.
That is the subject. Not which country you move to, but your nationality, and the portability rule attached to the pension your nationality issues. The relocation content quotes a monthly budget and the entry-year value of your pension and stops there, as if the pension were a fixed quantity that travels intact. For some nationalities it does. For others it freezes, or claws back, or shrinks in proportion to how long you lived at home. No one has put the rules side by side, because each government documents only its own, and the expat forums argue one passport at a time. Here they are in one grid, each cell sourced to the government that wrote the rule.
Pension portability is policy: it changes, and it turns on your own contribution and residence record.
The four verbs
Strip away the national detail and every state-pension system does one of four things when you move it to Southeast Asia.
It pays: the full pension, with its annual increase, anywhere, no residence test once you are entitled. The United States and Ireland do this.
It freezes: payable, but the annual increase stops the day you leave for a non-qualifying country, and the number never moves again. The United Kingdom does this, in Thailand and most of the world.
It claws back: payable only if you clear a past-residence bar; miss it and the pension stops after a set absence, and the means-tested top-up stops regardless. Canada does this through Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
It proportions: payable, but at a fraction set by how many years you lived in the source country, so the pension shrinks the less of your working life you spent at home. Australia and New Zealand do this.
The destination barely touches any of this. A Canadian’s OAS is conditioned on 20 years in Canada whether the new address is in Bangkok or Manila. An Australian’s pension is proportioned by Australian residence in both. There is exactly one case where the Southeast Asian country flips the answer, and it is the British one: Thailand freezes the UK pension, the Philippines uprates it. Everywhere else in this grid, the two destinations give the identical result, and the variable is the passport.
The cross-nationality portability matrix
This is the grid the governments will not assemble, because no single government has a reason to. Rows are the source-country pension systems. Columns are the four questions that decide a retirement: is it indexed or frozen once you leave, what residence or clawback test gates it, is it actually payable in Thailand and the Philippines, and the one rule that does the real damage. Every cell is the government’s own published rule, dated and verified.
| Source pension | Indexed or frozen abroad? | Residence / clawback test | Payable in Thailand / Philippines? | The one rule that bites |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK State Pension | Indexed or frozen abroad? Frozen in Thailand; uprated in the Philippines (the rare exception) | Residence / clawback test No income or residence test — just the country list: EEA, Gibraltar, Switzerland and agreement states uprate, all else frozen | Payable in Thailand / Philippines? Paid in both — but frozen for life in Thailand, rising every April in the Philippines | The one rule that bites The freeze locks the number at its entry-year rate forever; the gap only widens |
| Canada OAS | Indexed or frozen abroad? Indexed quarterly to CPI, paid abroad — if you qualify to be paid abroad at all | Residence / clawback test Needs 20 years' residence in Canada after 18 to be paid past 6 months abroad; under 20 years, OAS stops in month 7 | Payable in Thailand / Philippines? Paid in both if the 20-year bar is cleared; otherwise stops after 6 months | The one rule that bites GIS (the low-income top-up) stops after 6 months abroad regardless — it is not portable |
| Canada CPP | Indexed or frozen abroad? Indexed to CPI, paid in full | Residence / clawback test None — contributory, earnings-based, not residence-tested | Payable in Thailand / Philippines? Paid in both, anywhere in the world, regardless of residence | The one rule that bites No rule bites; CPP is the one fully portable Canadian pension |
| Australia Age Pension | Indexed or frozen abroad? Indexed, but only on the proportion you keep | Residence / clawback test Full for 26 weeks, then proportional by Australian Working Life Residence: (months+1)/420, full at 35 years | Payable in Thailand / Philippines? Paid in both — but no agreement with either, so the full proportional cut applies | The one rule that bites Under 35 years of residence, the pension is permanently cut to a fraction (28 yrs ≈ 80%, 20 yrs ≈ 57%) |
| US Social Security | Indexed or frozen abroad? Indexed — the full annual COLA is paid abroad; no FX adjustment | Residence / clawback test None for a US citizen: payable anywhere except Cuba and North Korea | Payable in Thailand / Philippines? Paid in full in both for US citizens, COLA intact | The one rule that bites Only bites non-citizens: Thailand is Country List 4 (needs 40 credits / 10 yrs US residence); the Philippines is List 2 (paid regardless) |
| Ireland State Pension (Contributory) | Indexed or frozen abroad? Indexed to whatever increase Ireland applies, paid in full | Residence / clawback test None once entitled — based on PRSI contributions, not residence; claimable from abroad | Payable in Thailand / Philippines? Paid in both, anywhere, into a foreign account | The one rule that bites No rule bites the contributory pension; only the means-tested non-contributory version is non-portable |
| New Zealand Super | Indexed or frozen abroad? Indexed on the proportion you keep | Residence / clawback test General portability: 1/45th of the full rate per year of NZ residence (ages 20–65); 45 years for full | Payable in Thailand / Philippines? Paid in both under general portability — Thailand and the Philippines are non-agreement countries | The one rule that bites Must be resident and present in NZ when you apply to take it overseas; then proportioned by residence |
Sources: GOV.UK State Pension abroad + HoC Library SN01457 (UK); Canada.ca OAS/GIS/CPP payments outside Canada; Australian Guide to Social Security Law 7.2.2 + SSAct s1221-A1; SSA Pub. 05-10137 (US); Citizens Information Ireland; Work and Income NZ. Checked 2026-06-06. Rules are policy and can change.
Read down the third column first, the one that asks whether the pension is even payable here. Almost every row says yes. That is the trap in the brochure’s framing: portability is rarely a binary of paid-or-not. It is a question of how much and whether it grows, and those answers, in the first and fourth columns, are where the retirements diverge. Two of these systems pay you in full and let the pension grow. One freezes it. Three shrink it by a residence formula. The address you choose moves exactly one of those outcomes.
UK — freeze
The UK is the clean case of the freeze, and this site has already costed the freeze year by year, so the arithmetic is settled elsewhere. The rule: the State Pension is payable anywhere but only uprated (raised each April) in the EEA, Gibraltar, Switzerland, and the specific countries holding a reciprocal social-security agreement that provides for it. Thailand has no such agreement and is frozen. The Philippines does, and is uprated. There is no income test, no cost-of-living rationale, no means assessment — just which side of a list the address falls on.
About 437,000 people were drawing a frozen UK pension abroad as of August 2024, down from roughly 492,000 in 2020 as the cohort ages out, and around 84% of them live in Australia, Canada or New Zealand. Asia is a smaller share and a quieter one, which is why the campaigning noise comes from elsewhere and the Thailand retiree often learns the rule after arriving.
The damage is the absence of the triple lock, the annual rise by the highest of inflation, earnings or 2.5%. A claimant who started the full new State Pension in 2016/17 at £155.65 a week and moved to Thailand still receives £155.65. The identical claimant in the Philippines now receives the 2026/27 rate of £241.30. That is about £85.65 a week apart, roughly £19,400 already gone over the decade, widening every April because the uprated figure compounds and the frozen one is a flat line. The uprated track is the only moving number here:
| Date | £/week | Basis | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date 2016 | £/week 155.65 | Basis sourced | Note 2016/17, system start |
| Date 2017 | £/week 159.55 | Basis triangulated | Note — |
| Date 2018 | £/week 164.35 | Basis triangulated | Note — |
| Date 2019 | £/week 168.6 | Basis triangulated | Note — |
| Date 2020 | £/week 175.2 | Basis sourced | Note Promoted triangulated -> sourced 2026-08-20, verified against the DWP's own published benefit and pension rate tables for 2020/21. |
| Date 2021 | £/week 179.6 | Basis sourced | Note Promoted triangulated -> sourced 2026-08-20, verified against the DWP's own published benefit and pension rate tables for 2021/22. |
| Date 2022 | £/week 185.15 | Basis sourced | Note Promoted triangulated -> sourced 2026-08-20, verified against the DWP's own published benefit and pension rate tables for 2022/23. |
| Date 2023 | £/week 203.85 | Basis sourced | Note 2023/24, after the 10.1% rise |
| Date 2024 | £/week 221.2 | Basis sourced | Note 2024/25, after 8.5% |
| Date 2025 | £/week 230.25 | Basis sourced | Note 2025/26, after 4.1% |
| Date 2026 | £/week 241.3 | Basis sourced | Note 2026/27, after the 4.8% triple-lock rise |
Source: House of Commons Library — State Pension uprating (CBP-7812, CBP-10403) · latest 241.3 £/week (2026) · as of 2026-05-19
The British case is also the only row in the matrix where moving from Thailand to the Philippines changes the verb from freeze to pay. For everyone else, the two countries are interchangeable and the passport is destiny.
Canada — clawback
Canada is where “payable abroad” hides the most. The country runs three retirement pillars and they behave in three different ways the moment you leave.
Old Age Security is residence-based. To keep receiving it outside Canada beyond six months, you must have lived in Canada for at least 20 years after age 18. Clear that and OAS follows you to Bangkok or Manila, indexed to inflation. Miss it, and an immigrant who arrived in Canada in their thirties easily can, and OAS stops in the seventh month of absence. The bar is the clawback: not a deduction from a pension you are receiving, but a switch that turns the pension off if your Canadian residence is too thin.
The Guaranteed Income Supplement is harsher and simpler. It is the income-tested top-up for low-income pensioners, and it stops after six months outside Canada regardless of how many years you lived there. For a retiree whose income relies on GIS, the Southeast Asia move does not reduce the pension. It removes a piece of it outright, in month seven, and the only way to restore it is to come back.
Then the Canada Pension Plan does the opposite of all of it. CPP is contributory and earnings-based, not residence-tested, and it is paid anywhere in the world. A Canadian in Cebu keeps CPP in full, keeps OAS if and only if they cleared the 20-year bar, and loses GIS. One nationality, three pensions, three different answers — which is exactly why “is my pension portable” is the wrong question. The right one names the pillar.
Australia — proportion
Australia neither freezes nor switches off. It shrinks the pension by a formula, and the formula is unsentimental about a life lived partly elsewhere.
The Age Pension is paid in full for the first 26 weeks of an overseas absence. After that it converts to a proportional rate set by Australian Working Life Residence, the years you lived in Australia between age 16 and pension age. The full overseas rate requires 35 years, expressed as 420 months. Below that, the pension is paid at (months of AWLR + 1) divided by 420. A 35-year resident keeps 100%. A 28-year resident keeps about 80%. Someone with 20 years keeps about 57%, permanently, for the rest of a retirement spent abroad. The calculation is the SSAct portability rate calculator, section 1221-A1, and it does not care why the years are short.
There is a second mechanism that catches the returner. Australia has no social-security agreement with Thailand or the Philippines, so a former resident cannot simply claim the pension from inside Southeast Asia. They must return to Australia, claim there, and then remain for two years before the pension becomes portable at all — leave inside that window and it is cancelled, forcing a re-claim. The government’s own worked case is a man who returned from Thailand, claimed, went back to Thailand to settle his affairs, and had the claim rejected for non-residence. He had to fly back and start again. The pension is portable to Southeast Asia, but the path runs through two years of physical residence in Australia first, and then a proportional cut on the far side.
US — pays
The American answer is the short one, and it is the reason the Briton and the American in Chiang Mai diverge. A US citizen may receive Social Security anywhere SSA can send a payment, which rules out only Cuba and North Korea. Thailand and the Philippines are unrestricted. The annual cost-of-living adjustment is paid in full abroad, and the pamphlet is explicit that benefits are not increased or decreased for exchange-rate movements — the dollar amount is the dollar amount, wherever you spend it.
There is one fault line, and it does not touch the citizen. Non-citizen beneficiaries (a Thai or Filipino spouse, a survivor) face the alien-nonpayment rule, which stops payments after six full calendar months outside the US unless the country of residence grants an exception. Here the destination matters again, quietly. The Philippines is on SSA’s Country List 2: a non-citizen drawing on their own earnings record is paid regardless of how long they are abroad. Thailand is on Country List 4, where a non-citizen needs 40 US work credits or 10 years of US residence to keep being paid. For the US-citizen retiree the pension simply pays. For the spouse who may outlive them in-country, the address can decide whether the survivor benefit survives the survivor’s return home.
The two that travel clean, and the proportional pair
Two systems beyond the US pay without drama, and two more behave like Australia.
The Irish State Pension (Contributory) is the cleanest in the grid. It is built on PRSI contributions, not residence, and once you are entitled it is payable anywhere in the world, claimable from abroad, paid into a foreign account, and not frozen. It rises with whatever increase Ireland applies. The only Irish pension that does not travel is the non-contributory, means-tested one, which is a different benefit for a different person. An Irish retiree with a full contribution record carries the pension to Manila the way an American carries Social Security: intact, indexed, unconditional.
New Zealand is the proportional pair to Australia, on a different denominator. NZ Super paid to a non-agreement country (Thailand and the Philippines both qualify) is paid under general portability at 1/45th of the full rate for each whole year of New Zealand residence between ages 20 and 65. Forty-five qualifying years pays the full rate; thirty years pays two-thirds; and the applicant must be resident and present in New Zealand at the moment they apply to take it overseas. Like the Australian pension, it is not frozen and not switched off. It is simply scaled to how much of a working life was spent at home, which for a late-arriving immigrant or a long-departed expat is the quiet way the number comes out smaller than the brochure assumed.
What the grid says
Step back from the six rows and one finding remains. The destination is almost never the variable. Read across the matrix and the Thailand column and the Philippines column say the same thing in every row but one. The exception is the UK freeze, and it is the only place in the entire grid where choosing Manila over Chiang Mai changes the pension’s behaviour rather than just its surroundings. For a Canadian, an Australian, an American, an Irish or a New Zealand retiree, the two countries are interchangeable on pension portability, and what decides the outcome is the contribution and residence record already written into the passport years before the move was considered.
This is the same structural point the rest of this desk keeps arriving at from other directions. The brochure sells the place. The thing that breaks or holds the retirement is a rule attached to who you are, not where you go — and it was decided before you booked the flight. The drawdown model finds the highest-leverage variable in a 25-year retirement abroad is a treaty checkbox, not an investment return. The frozen-pension arithmetic isolates one row of this grid and costs it to the pound. This piece is the map those pieces sit inside.
And the map is only the first input. A pension that pays in full is not a pension that holds its value. The US and Irish retiree who clears every portability test still hands the indexed, unconditional pension to the same two decades of currency drift and Southeast Asian medical inflation that erode everyone else’s. Portability decides whether the pension grows or stalls in its home currency. It does nothing about what that currency buys in a Bangkok hospital in 2045. The frozen British pension is the worst case because it loses on both axes at once — a flat nominal number divided by a falling exchange rate, against a rising medical bill. The fully portable pensions lose on one axis instead of two. None of them is exempt.
What would have to be true
The portability rule is immaterial to a nameable few, and worth saying so plainly.
It does not matter if your state pension is a small slice of your income and the rest is a large, indexed, private or public-service pension you draw in a currency you also spend, the kind of pension that travels by its own terms regardless of the state system. It does not matter if you are American or Irish with a full record, because the answer is already “paid in full.” It matters less the shorter the retirement, which is not a comfort anyone should reach for. And it can be neutralised by the mobile and well-resourced, who can maintain qualifying residence or arrange their affairs around the rule — a strategy available mainly to the people who needed it least.
For everyone else, and that is most people retiring on or near a state pension, the rule in your row of the grid is not an opinion or a risk. It is the published mechanics of the pension you will live on, and it is knowable today, while the nationality is fixed and the address is still a choice. The honest move is the unglamorous one: find your row, read the fourth column, and model the pension you will actually be paid in Thailand or the Philippines (frozen, clawed back, proportioned or whole) against twenty-five years of the things that erode it. The brochure’s single starting number is the one figure in this entire subject that is guaranteed not to be what you get.