The Farmers' Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Mela) achieved a 7.2 per cent return in 2025, its full-year results have revealed.

The return is 1.2 percentage points lower than the 8.4 per cent recorded in 2024.

At the end of 2025, Mela’s investments had a market value of €430.8m, up from €399.5m at the end of 2024.

During the year, its total operating expenses decreased by approximately 4 per cent from the previous year and amounted to €26.3m, down from €27.4bn.

Mela CEO, Heli Backman, said: “We have successfully streamlined our operations in a systematic manner.

“The reduction in costs demonstrates that our improvement efforts are yielding results. Strengthening our investment activities and competitive bidding for asset management also clearly resulted in improved cost efficiency and strong returns. This creates stability well into the future.”

At the end of the year, Mela had 50,408 MYEL-insured clients, of whom 46,081 were agricultural entrepreneurs (including fishermen, forestry entrepreneurs, and reindeer herders) and 4,341 were grant recipients.

In 2025, the number of MYEL-insured individuals dropped by 2.3 per cent from the previous year. In addition, nearly 80,000 new applications were received, more than 3 per cent higher than in 2024.

In total, benefits totalling €1,105.6m were paid out, and at the end of the year, Mela was paying pensions to 83,077 people. Its members transitioned to an employment-based pension at an average age of 63.2.

In 2026, Mela said it will continue to develop its digital services and automate its processes.

“We want to make our services even more efficient and free up our experts’ time for more demanding tasks and personalised advice,” Backman added.

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