Press releases

This year, Finland ranked seventh in the international Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index comparison. Finland dropped one notch compared to 2023. In the integrity sub-index, the Finnish pension system continues to outrank the others.

In the spring of 2024, the Finnish Centre for Pensions launched a mass superivison of wages that have been reported to the Incomes Register but lack pension insurance. Light entrepreneurs were placed under the microscope.

The group of new disability pensioners includes an increasingly higher share of younger people whose income depends on the national pension or other social security benefits. At the same time, the partial disability pension has gained in popularity. For partial disability pensioners, income from work alongside the earnings-related pension is important. A total of 180,000 persons received a disability pension in Finland in 2023.

More than 60 per cent of Finns find employment-based immigration to be a good means to strengthen pension financing if so required. According to the fresh Pension Barometer, the second most popular alternative is to raise pension contributions. Most respondents object to cutting current or future pensions.

According to statistics of the Finnish Centre for Pensions, nearly 21,000 new partial old-age pensions were paid out in Finland in 2023. The amount was one and a half times higher than the previously established amount, but 14,000 less than in 2022. The exceptional index development in 2022 encouraged people to retire early towards the end of the year.

The accrued pension increases if a person continues to work beyond their retirement age, thanks to both the increment for late retirement and the additional pension accrued for continued working.

The number of light entrepreneurs has grown rapidly in recent years. At the same time, the profile of light entrepreneurs has changed: they are increasingly younger, of foreign origin and have only a basic education. The Finnish Centre for Pensions’ study examines, for the first time, the careers, income and pension accrual of light entrepreneurs in Finland over a period of several years.

The investment year 2023 was challenging for pension funds in different parts of the world. The average real return of pension investors was less than 2 per cent. The yield of Finnish pension funds was even worse. Due to high inflation, the average real return 0.2 per cent negative. The average real return of Swedish pension funds was 1.2 per cent negative.

The Finnish average pension developed positively in 2023. At the same time, total pension expenditure increased – pensions were paid out totalling almost 38 billion euros. About 1.6 million Finns received a pension in 2023.

The recently published book Understanding Finnish Pensions tells the success story of Finnish pensions. Pension are an essential part of a welfare society and play a role in everyone’s life. Yet pension are not very well known. Read more about the easy-to-understand and concise book, as well as about rehabilitation refusals, pension taxation and pension …