04/12/12

Benefit payments by Kela for 2011 total €12.5 billion

Kela paid a total of €12.5 billion in social security benefits during 2011. Total expenditure by Kela amounted to €12.9 billion, an increase of 2.6% over the previous year.

Administration costs accounted for 3.4% of the total expenditure. 69 percent of the expenditure was funded by the State and 26 percent by social insurance contributions.Contributions from municipalities covered 5 percent. This information is drawn from the financial statements prepared by Kela's Board and approved by the Parliamentary Trustees. The Annual Report for 2011 will be available at the beginning of May.

The majority of Finns received at least some benefit payments from Kela during 2011. Over the course of the year, health insurance benefits were provided to a total of 4.3 million people and unemployment benefits to 271,400 people. In the latter group, 44.4% received benefit on account of participation in employment promoting activation measures. At year-end, Kela paid pension benefits to 714,000 people. Child benefits were provided for a million children.

The biggest increase was seen in rehabilitation expenditure, which totalled €339 million, 9.2% more than in 2010. Health insurance benefit expenditure grew by €145 million on the previous year (3.7%). Kela paid out €4,073.4 million in health insurance benefits.

At the end of the year, Kela had 216 local offices and 2 secondary customer service locations. Kela took action to develop single-window government services. An agreement concerning the delivery of single-window government services had been made with 138 customer service locations by the end of 2011.

A total of 16.3 million visits were made to the Kela website in 2011. The number of authenticated online transactions grew from 6.5 million in 2010 to 8.1 million in 2011. Kela's call centre answered a total of 1.9 million calls.

Additional information:
Juhani Rantamäki (general inquiries), tel. 020 634 1409
Erkki Meriläinen (financial issues), tel. 020 634 1316
Esko Karjala (statistics), tel. 020 634 1858
firstname.surname (at) kela.fi