The average monthly earnings-related old-age pension for women retiring in 2021 was €1,607, over €200 more than women who retired prior to this, research from the Finnish Centre for Pensions (ETK) has revealed.

According to the figures, a total of €30bn was paid out in earnings-related pensions in 2021 to 1.5 million savers, 90 per cent of whom, around 1.3 million individuals, received old-age pensions.

The average monthly earnings-related old-age pensions for those retiring in 2021 was €1,841, with men receiving an average monthly of €2,088 and women receiving €1,607.

Despite the increases for women's pensions in 2021, the ETK found that there was an “insignificant” gap between new retirees and those who retired earlier for men.

However, there were differences between age groups, with men aged 75-79 holding on average the highest old-age pensions, which ETK statistics manager, Tiina Palotie-Heino, suggested may be as a result of their "long and steady working lives".

“In addition, the pension system was more generous earlier: the earnings-related pension was determined based on the last years of work, and there was no pension-cutting life expectancy coefficient," she explained.

More broadly, the figures showed that there were 61,500 new retirees taking an earnings-related pension in 2021, the same as in 2020.

However, whilst the number of individuals retiring on an earnings-related pension in 2021 remained stable, the ETK point out that the the number of new retirees on a disability pension fell by 8 per cent since 2020, with around 17,500 people retiring on a disability pension, the lowest figure since the turn of the century.

In contrast, most new retirees, around 44,000 individuals, retired on an old-age pension.

Indeed, the figures also showed that the majority (88 per cent) of earnings-related pensions, around €27bn, were paid as old-age pensions, while disability pensions and survivors’ pensions accounted for just six per cent each of the total pension expenditure in Finland in 2021.

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