Pension record

As of 2017, pension accrues on gainful employment starting from the age of 17. As of 2005, the age limit was 18 and before that it was 23. The changes to the age limits did not take effect retroactively.

A self-employed person can take out YEL insurance at the earliest at the age of 18. Pension accrues based on confirmed income under YEL insurance from that age on.

Since 2019, employers have reported the earnings information of all their employees to the Incomes Register when paying salaries and wages.

You can view your most recent information at the address incomesregister.fi

Your earnings information from the previous month, which affects your pension, is transferred from the Incomes Register to Varma’s pension record on the 8th day of each month.

• If there is an error in the information, contact your employer, who will correct the information in the Incomes Register.
• If your employer has terminated its operations or gone bankrupt, you can send an enquiry in our online service.

If you notice any missing information in your earnings information preceding 2019,

• log in to our online sevice and send an enquiry or
• report an error in public-sector earnings information to Keva.

If the error concerns information that is more than six years old, you must, in addition to sending us an enquiry, provide proof of the missing information, such as a record of employment and payslip or tax information stating the amount of your paid wages/salary.

If your pension record includes employment relationships under LEL and/or TaEL, the pension record will state your employment year, the amount of your earnings and the pension that has accrued on your earnings. It will not include the start and end dates of your employment or the employer’s name.

LEL insurance covered employees of a private sector employer between 1962 and 2007 in the agriculture, forestry, construction or port sector.

TaEL insurance covered musicians, directors, reporters, translators and other groups working in the performing arts mentioned in the act who were employed between 1986 and 2007. Between 1998 and 2007, the act also covered brief private sector employment relationships outside of the industries covered by LEL.

These employment relationships did not accrue pension if annual earnings were below a certain level.

The name of your employer may have changed, but it does not affect the amount of your pension or your reported earnings.

As an entrepreneur, you accrue pension on your confirmed income that is insured under YEL. Pension for the self-employed accrues according to the same rules as employees’ pension. The current year’s confirmed income is not shown at the annual level if you look at the pension record in the course of that year.

If you have not changed your YEL confirmed income, your initial income has been adjusted annually by the wage coefficient. This means the amount of pension that you accrue annually will remain the same. You can change your YEL confirmed income in Varma’s online service at any time if it does not correspond to the value of your work input.

You accrue pension for unpaid periods for which an earnings-based benefit is paid. Pension also accrues on periods spent caring for a child under the age of 3 at home, and on studies leading to a qualification or degree. Read more about pension security during unpaid periods.

You will be able to see the pension accrual in your pension record at the latest in spring of the year after the benefit was received. The payers of benefits for unpaid periods, such as Kela and unemployment funds, report the previous year’s data to the Incomes Register by 31 March. As a result, the pension record might not include the amount of accrued pension and information on benefits before that date. The data on degrees and pension earned for studies will show on your pension record in the spring following the year in which you graduated, mainly by the end of May. If you notice errors or missing information in benefits you have received before 2019, send us an enquiry.

In addition to pension accrual, the pension record also usually shows an estimate of your future pension. The estimate is calculated on the basis of your most recent average earnings data. Estimates include the impact of the life expectancy coefficient and the amount of a possible increment for deferred retirement.

If you have not yet applied for pension, you can calculate estimates of your pension according to different starting dates in the ‘Pension estimates (pension calculator)’ page of our online service. You can also change the amount of your earnings on which the estimate is based.

Does your estimate include a public sector reduction?

• If you worked in the public sector before 2005, the amount of your accumulated pension may have decreased due to the integration of pensions.
• Your accrued pension will be reduced if you were born before 1960, your public-sector employment began before 1993, you retire before the age of 65 and your public sector employment ended before then.

Further information about the public-sector reduction is available at Keva