YEL insurance for self-employed person

Your age is between 18 and 67. The need to have YEL insurance ends based on your year of birth. More specifically, the need to have YEL insurance ends in the calendar month in which:

• An entrepreneur born in or before 1957 turns 68
• An entrepreneur born in 1958–1961 turns 69
• An entrepreneur born in or after 1962 turns 70.

If your self-employed business lasts at least 4 months in a row, get YEL insurance. For shorter periods, you do not need YEL insurance.

A business that lasts less than 4 months must also be insured if the other four conditions are true. That means that even if your business stops for many months at a time, your business is still seen to continue from one year to the next. An entrepreneur who runs a kiosk every summer, for example, could be in this situation.

The YEL income is the estimate of the value of your work input during one year.

A year means a rolling period of 12 months, not the calendar year. If you are a full-time entrepreneur, you almost always need to get YEL insurance. A low salary, for example, is not a reason for not getting YEL insurance.

You need YEL insurance also when you are a part-time entrepreneur, if the five conditions are true. It is possible to be an employee and a part-time entrepreneur at the same time. In that case, your employer gets you the employees’ pension insurance (TyEL) for your work as an employee, and you get self-employed person’s pension insurance (YEL) for your work as an entrepreneur.

The fact that you own your company does not mean you have to get YEL insurance. You only need YEL insurance if you work in your company. 

Impact of company form

The legal form of your company and your ownership share in the company have an effect on if you need to have YEL insurance or not. You need to get YEL insurance when you are one of these:

• a private self-employed person: trader alone, or a family member
• working for a trader without being paid a wage
• a partner in a general partnership company
• a responsible partner in a limited partnership company
• a partner in an executive position in a limited liability company, who holds alone more than 30 per cent or, together with family members, holds more than 50 per cent of the company’s shares or votes, or
• in an executive position in a co-operative or another organization and have a controlling interest of more than 30 per cent in the corporation alone or more than 50 per cent together with a family member.
  • controlling interest can also be indirect through an intermediate company, in which case different controlling interest requirements apply.

Usually, you must live and work in Finland. You might need YEL insurance also if you work in Finland and live in another EU country.

Read more about self-employment abroad >

You cannot replace YEL insurance with voluntary pension insurance. Entrepreneurs working in Finland must have YEL insurance.

YEL insurance is always personal, not company-specific. You can have several companies, but you only need one YEL insurance which covers all your businesses.

If you get the insurance retroactively later, it should take effect from the date when the insured work began. You pay YEL payments for the period when the insurance is in effect. For example, if your entrepreneurship under YEL begins in January, you have six months to get insurance retroactively, taking effect from January.

It is possible to get YEL insurance retroactively for the current and the three preceding calendar years. For periods prior to that, you cannot generate pension. If you get YEL pension retroactively, you should remember that you will have to pay the previous YEL payments all at once. That is why we recommend that you get YEL insurance with immediate effect when the need to have YEL insurance begins.

If you live outside Finland when you retire, you may need to claim your pension from Finland through the pension authority of the country in which you live. The pension authority will forward your claim to Finland. In Finland, your claim will be forwarded to your earnings-related pension provider and/or Kela, depending on which pension benefit you are claiming. 

You can terminate your YEL insurance if your self-employment ends completely or becomes so small that your YEL income is lower than the lower limit for YEL insurance. You can submit the termination notification in our self-employed person’s online service. Read more about the termination.