Earnings-related pension services for employees, the self-employed and pensioners

In 2013 Varma paid EUR 4.8 billion in pensions to 333,700 recipients. The number of pension decisions made by Varma was on the rise during the year under review, totalling 43,000.

In 2013 Varma paid out pensions in the amount of EUR 4.8 billion, i.e. approximately 6.4 per cent more than in 2012. The increase is mainly due to the constant rise in the number of pension recipients, which is a consequence of the change in the population’s age structure and longer life expectancy.

A total of 24,000 new pension decisions were made, which is 8.7 per cent more than the previous year. The biggest increase was seen in old-age pension decisions; they increased 12.6 per cent over 2012. 8.3 per cent of old-age pensions have been granted to 68-year-olds who have been working while receiving pension. Working while drawing a pension has been on the rise in recent years. Those insured by Varma retire on average at the age of 63.5.

The volume of new disability pension applications continued to decrease slightly, which is in line with the positive trend visible for several years now. The rejection rate for new disability pension applications by earnings-related pension companies has been on the rise in recent years; this is attributed to the general decline in the number of applications over the past ten years. The actual number of rejections has not been increasing. Varma’s rejection rate is in line with the general development in the sector. In 2013, Varma rejected 31.4 per cent of new disability pension applications.

During the year under review, we examined the situation in 2012 of those whose disability application had been rejected in 2009. The results show that 26 per cent of those people had retired on disability pension by the end of 2012. Few were working, and over 30 per cent were unemployed. Varma will be using these results when providing consultation to its customers and in its in-house training.

Comprehensive online services for managing pension matters

Varma offers its customers, i.e. employees, the self-employed, pension applicants and pension recipients, comprehensive online services for managing their pension matters.

Increasing numbers of our customers are actively using our online services. In 2013, the use of online services for private customers increased 43 per cent. The pension application monitoring service is particularly popular: 82 per cent of pension application enquiries were made through it. In total 74.5 per cent of all private customer contacts took place online. As many as 66.4 per cent of pensioners handled their enquiries through our online services too.

Varma received 6,500 electronic pension applications in 2013, which accounts for 27 per cent of all new applications. The number of online pension estimates totalled 127,051, which equals as much as 90 per cent of all estimates.