Documents to claim one-time Social Insurance in Vietnam as a foreigner

Updated September 2026. The list of documents to withdraw Social Insurance in Vietnam is shorter than the internet suggests. The law asks for two things: your Social Insurance book and a written request on Form 14-HSB (Article 78, Law on Social Insurance 2024, No. 41/2024/QH15). Everything else comes from your own situation, not from the regulation. This guide from terra separates the two, walks through the form field by field, and explains which papers need notarization, which need consular legalization, and which need neither.

Documents required to withdraw Social Insurance in Vietnam

Two documents, for every claimant: the original Social Insurance book, and the written request on Form 14-HSB. As a foreign national you add proof of identity, which in practice means a notarized passport copy with a certified Vietnamese translation, and in most cases proof that your labor contract ended. That is the whole compulsory core of a claim for a lump-sum Social Insurance allowance.

The reason people arrive at the counter with a folder of twelve documents is that the situation-specific papers get published as if they applied to everyone. They do not. Working out which situation you are in before you pay for a single notarization is the difference between a two-week preparation and a two-month one.

One opinion that will not be popular with everyone who sells this service: for a straightforward file, the document work is a morning at a notary office and an hour with the form. If a provider tells you the paperwork itself is complex, ask them which of the rows above they mean. What is genuinely hard sits elsewhere, in a former employer who has closed or in a claim run from another country.

How do you fill in Form 14-HSB?

Form 14-HSB is the written request the law refers to, and it is the only document you produce yourself. Since 1 April 2026 there is a new version under Decision No. 313/QD-BHXH. Download it fresh rather than reusing a copy saved from a blog post, because offices do return files submitted on the superseded form.

Five fields cause nearly all the corrections, and none of them is about the law.

Your name, in the order the passport shows it

Vietnamese forms expect family name first. Passports from most countries put given names first. If your book was registered with the order reversed, and you now write the passport order on the form, the two records do not match and the file stops. Write it exactly as it appears in the Social Insurance record, then attach the passport copy that explains the difference.

Your Social Insurance number

Use the number on the book, not the one on an old health insurance card if the two differ. Two numbers means two records, which have to be merged before payment. That merge is a separate procedure and it takes longer than the claim itself, so check this field first, not last.

The ground you are claiming on

For most foreign employees this is the end of the labor contract or the expiry of the work permit without renewal, under Article 70, Clause 2. It is not “leaving Vietnam”, and writing a departure date where the form asks for a legal ground is a common way to invite a query. If you are unsure which ground applies, the guide to one-time Social Insurance for foreigners sets out the four of them.

Bank account details

The account holder’s name has to match the claimant’s name on the form. A joint account in a spouse’s name, or an account opened under a slightly different transliteration, gets rejected at the payment stage rather than the assessment stage, which is the worst point to find out. If you plan to close your Vietnamese account before you leave, decide now who receives the money.

Signature and date

Sign as you sign your passport. This sounds trivial until a file is queried three weeks in because the signature on the form does not resemble the one on the identity document attached to it.

Notarization or consular legalization: which do you need?

For a standard claim by a foreign employee who is in Vietnam, you need notarization only. A notarized passport copy, with a certified Vietnamese translation, is what the office is asking for. No part of a normal file requires legalization while you are still in the country.

Mixing up the two is the single most expensive mistake in this process. Notarization certifies that a copy matches the original, or that a translation is faithful. It happens at a notary office in Vietnam, costs very little and takes an afternoon. Consular legalization certifies that a foreign official document is genuine, involves a Vietnamese diplomatic mission abroad, and takes weeks.

The rule of thumb worth remembering: documents issued in Vietnam are notarized in Vietnam. Documents issued abroad and used in Vietnam need legalization. If the only foreign document in your file is your passport, and you are copying it in Vietnam, you are in the first category and nothing in your file needs a consulate.

Documents that change with your situation

Four situations change the file. Identify yours before you go anywhere near a notary, because two of them change what you need to have signed and where.

Someone else files or collects on your behalf

Here is the change most guides have missed. Decision No. 313/QD-BHXH abolished Form 13-HSB, the standard authorization form the Social Insurance authority used to publish. The requirement itself did not change, and neither did your right to authorize someone. The authorization is now made as an ordinary power of attorney or authorization contract under civil law. In practice, make sure the document names the specific acts being authorized: preparing the file, submitting it, receiving requests for correction, and receiving the payment. A power of attorney that only covers “collecting the money” will not let your representative fix a query on the form.

You lost the Social Insurance book

A lost Social Insurance book is a lost record, not a lost entitlement. The book is reissued on request to the Social Insurance authority, and the contribution data behind it is unaffected. Start the reissue before you prepare anything else, because it sits on the critical path and nothing else in the file substitutes for it.

You have two Social Insurance numbers

Common among foreign employees who changed employers in Vietnam, usually because the second employer registered a new record instead of reusing the existing one. Both records have to be merged into one before a claim can be settled. Check this at the same time as you check the contribution history, not after you have prepared the rest of the file.

Your passport was renewed after you registered

The Social Insurance record carries the passport number you registered with, and a renewed passport carries a different one. The office matches identity on that number, so the mismatch surfaces as a query on an otherwise complete file. Fix the record before you file, not after: personal details are adjusted with Form TK1-TS, the version issued under Decision No. 366/QD-BHXH of 29 April 2026 and applied from 1 May 2026, supported by a copy of the old passport or a confirmation from the issuing authority linking the two numbers. Keep a copy of the expired passport when you renew in Vietnam. It is the cheapest piece of evidence in this entire process and almost nobody keeps it.

Your former employer has closed or will not respond

Then the document you are missing is usually the proof that the contract ended, and there is a workaround built on the company’s public registration status. That case has its own guide: what to do when your former employer in Vietnam has closed.

Why filing from abroad adds weeks

If you sign the authorization after you have left Vietnam, it has to be certified at a Vietnamese embassy or consulate and then legalized before a Vietnamese office will accept it. Budget four to eight weeks, longer if you live far from the mission or if it requires an appointment booked in advance. This, not the Social Insurance office, is why claims filed from abroad take months.

The same signature, given in Vietnam before you fly, takes an hour at a notary office. That asymmetry is the strongest practical argument in the whole subject, and it is why terra treats the authorization as the one step that cannot be deferred. If your departure is still ahead of you, put it in the calendar now, alongside the other exit tasks in the 60-day plan before you leave Vietnam.

A note on filing online, since it comes up: submission through the National Public Service Portal exists and works, but it requires a level-2 VNeID electronic identification account. Most foreign employees do not have one, and setting one up after departure is not realistic. Treat the online route as a convenience if you already hold the account, not as a plan for filing from abroad.

The five reasons files get sent back

Four of the five are document errors rather than eligibility problems, which is the encouraging part: they are almost entirely avoidable, and none of them requires legal knowledge to prevent.

Only the fifth is a real obstacle, and even then it usually reduces the amount rather than blocking the claim. For the numbers behind that, see the contribution rates and the insured salary cap that decide what each month is worth.

Documents to withdraw Social Insurance: the checklist to print

These are the documents required to withdraw Social Insurance in Vietnam, arranged as a checklist. Print it, tick it, take it with you. No sign-up, no email address. If you are working through it and hit one of the situation rows, that is the point at which a second opinion is worth more than another hour of searching.

What to do before you file

Read your contribution record first, then collect paper. Almost every returned file in this list fails on something that was visible in the record before a single document was notarized, and the documents required to withdraw Social Insurance in Vietnam are only worth preparing once you know the record supports the claim.

terra reads the record, checks the file against this list and files the claim, for a published fee of VND 10 million at signing plus 15% of the amount withdrawn, charged only after the money reaches you, both before VAT. If your file is clean and you are still in Vietnam, you do not need that and we would rather say so.