You earn pension for work you do in Finland. Your employer takes out pension insurance for you and pays your share and the employer’s share of the contributions to the pension provider. As a self-employed person, you must take out pension insurance yourself. You earn pension for all work that is insured, regardless of for how long you work.
How much pension you earn depends on for how long you work in Finland, how much you are paid for your work and what the pension accrual rates in Finland are. Pension contributions you have paid to Finland are not refunded to you, for example, when you leave Finland. Instead, you are paid the earnings-related pension you have earned in Finland when you qualify for the pension, for example, based on your age, and you claim the pension.
The earnings-related pension that you have accrued in Finland is paid to you regardless of your nationality or in which country you live. However, at present, pensions cannot be paid to a pension recipient or into a bank account in a Russian bank that is subject to sanctions.
The pension record includes data on all your earnings for which you have accrued pension in Finland so far. Your future pension is based on the data on your pension record.
Log in to view your pension record
If you do not have the Finnish identification tokens required to register, you can request an extract of your pension record from your own earnings-related pension provider or by telephone from the Finnish Centre for Pensions’ Customer Service, phone +358 29 411 2110.
Your country of residence determines how you claim your pension
How you claim your pension from Finland depends on in which country you live when you claim your pension. The retirement age in Finland may be different from the one in the country in which you live. In other words, it is possible that you have to claim your pension from Finland at a different point in time than your pension from the country in which you live. You can continue working in the country you live even if you claim an old-age pension from Finland.
Send your pension claim to the pension authorities in the country where you live. The pension authority of the country in which you live will send your pension claim to Finland with any necessary extra information. In Finland, your claim will be forwarded to your earnings-related pension provider and/or Kela, depending on which pension benefit you are claiming.
As of 1 February 2025, Kela no longer pays you national pensions (old-age and disability pensions) if you life in an EU or an EEA country, the United Kingdom or Switzerland.
Send your pension claim to the pension authorities in the country where you live. They will send your pension claim to Finland with any necessary extra information. In Finland, your claim will be forwarded to your earnings-related pension provider and/or Kela, depending on which pension benefit you are claiming.
The social security agreements are different from each other and, depending on the agreement, you may have the right to an earnings-related pension from Finland only.
If you live in China, you can apply for an earnings-related pension (old-age, disability and survivors’ pension) based on the social security agreement. Fill out the Finnish national claim form and send it to the Finnish Centre for Pensions or your own earnings-related pension provider. Go to the footer or menu at tyoelake.fi to find the forms. You can use a printed form or an online form that you can fill out online and then print out.
China and Finland have signed a social security agreement with each other. Based on the agreement, pensions are paid from one country to another. However, there is no agreement on cooperation between pension authorities when claiming a pension.
If you live in a country with which Finland doesn’t have a social security agreement, you can claim your earnings-related pension from Finland. Fill out the Finnish national claim form and send it to the Finnish Centre for Pensions or your own earnings-related pension provider. Go to the footer or menu at tyoelake.fi to find the forms. You can use a printed form or an online form that you can fill out online and then print out.
Who issues my pension decision and pays out my pension?
You will get a pension decision from your earnings-related pension provider as far as the earnings-related pension is concerned. If you have claimed a national pension, you will get that pension decision from Kela. The pension decisions are sent to you by post to the address you have entered on your pension claim.
The pension provider that has granted you the earnings-related pension also pays out the pension. If the amount of your pension is small, it is paid as a lump-sum payment.
Your earnings-related pension will be paid once a month to the bank account number that you provided on your pension claim form. Most pension providers pay out pensions on the first banking day of the month, but there may be exceptions.
Earnings-related pensions are also paid abroad, regardless of your nationality. As a rule, national pensions are not paid abroad. For more information on the national pension, go to Kela’s website (Kela.fi)
Your pension from Finland may affect the benefits you get in the country where you live
A pension paid from Finland may affect your pension or other social benefits that you are paid in the country where you live. Before you claim a pension from Finland, check with the authorities of the country you live in how your Finnish pension may affect the pensions or other social benefits that you are getting from the country where you live.
Different pension benefits
Your old-age, disability or survivors’ pension from Finland can be paid to the country where you live.
Your retirement age for the old-age pension depends on the year in which you were born. The time you have taken care of your children or your profession do not affect your retirement age for the old-age pension.
Select your year and month of birth. The calculator will tell you when you can retire.
Your target retirement age
Target retirement age is not calculated for people born after .
Maximum pensionable age
The partial old-age pension is a flexible pension benefit. You can get a partial old-age pension if you were born in 1964 and have turned 62 years. You can continue working in the country you live in and take out a partial old-age pension from Finland. There are no limits as to how much you can work, but you can also choose not to work at all. Pension you get from the country where you live doesn’t affect the partial old-age pension that you are granted from Finland. The pension amount you have earned in Finland will be permanently reduced if you take out the partial old-age pension early.
If you suffer from an illness, defect or injury, you can ge a disability pension if your work ability has been reduced long-term (as a rule, for at least one year without interruptions). Attach a medical statement to your claim for a disability pension. You can get the medical statement in the country where you live.
If your spouse or parent dies and they have worked in Finland at some point, you may have the right to a survivors’ pension from Finland (a surviving spouse’s pension for a spouse and an orphan’s pension for a child). Getting the survivors’ pension doesn’t require that you or your child have lived in Finland. If you are a common-law spouse and apply for a survivor’s pension from Finland, you must provide sufficient proof of your shared living circumstances abroad. That proof can be, for example, a certificate about your living arrangements with your deceased common-law spouse issued by the competent authority of the country you live in. Your earnings-related pension provider assesses whether the proof you present is sufficient.
Read more about the different pension benefits: old-age pension, partial old-age pension, disability pension and survivors’ pension.
Remember this when you have retired
You must report any changes to your circumstances directly to the pension provider that pays out your pension. This includes changes in your marital status, address and banking data.
If you live permanently elsewhere than in Finland, you have to confirm your information each year to the institution that pays out your pension. If your pension provider cannot get the necessary information directly from the authorities in your country where you live, it will send you a separate form to your home address. Fill out the form and return it as instructed.
The amount of the Finnish earnings-related pension you claim will not change if you live in Finland at the moment but move abroad when you have already begun receiving your earnings-related pension