Term
Pension insurance record
The employer’s record of an employee’s insured periods and assessment bases, sent to the Social Insurance Agency. A mistake in it surfaces only decades later when the pension is calculated.
Updated
What it means
The pension insurance record, ELDP for short, is the document by which an employer reports an employee’s periods of pension insurance and assessment bases to the Social Insurance Agency. One day the pension from old-age insurance or a disability pension will be calculated from this data.
It shows the insured period, days that do not count towards it, such as unpaid leave, and the total assessment base for each calendar year. The data comes from the payroll records and must match them exactly.
Today the Social Insurance Agency receives most data continuously from the monthly contribution statements, so an ELDP is prepared mainly at its request, on termination of employment, on a pension application or to correct errors. It concerns mainly pension insurance for periods missing from the system.
How it works in practice
On termination of employment and at the Agency’s request we prepare the ELDP from the payroll records in the prescribed format. We advise employees to check the statement of their individual insurance account, which shows what the Agency holds about them.
When taking over payroll from a previous accountant or after an employer has ceased to exist, the ELDP is often a problem: old payroll records are missing and nobody knows what was reported. On takeover we therefore also ask for the archive of payroll and personnel records for the whole period.
Payroll records and ELDP data are kept for a very long time, decades for pension insurance, because the employee’s pension entitlement is derived from them only on retirement. Archiving payroll records therefore takes longer than for ordinary accounting documents.
What to watch out for
An error in the ELDP or a missing period often comes to light only when the pension is calculated, when the employer no longer exists and the records are hard to find. The employee then has to prove the period themselves, for example with the employment contract and payslips.
The Social Insurance Agency can fine an employer for failing to submit an ELDP or for incorrect data. If the ELDP data does not match the contributions paid, the Agency can also claim the shortfall retrospectively with a penalty.
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