In recent years, the number of people participating in social insurance in our country has been increasing, and the coverage rate has also been rising. The main purpose for most people to join social insurance is to have a pension guarantee after they reach old age.

According to Article 16 of the Social Insurance Law, individuals who participate in the basic pension insurance and have accumulated contributions for 15 years, upon reaching the legal retirement age, can receive a basic pension on a monthly basis.

Paying for 15 years is a necessary condition for receiving a pension. What if one does not have 15 years of contributions upon reaching the retirement age? The answer provided by the Social Insurance Law is that one can continue to pay until they have 15 years of contributions (but not more than 15 years).

Why can't one continue to work until they have 15 years of contributions?

Currently, our retirement age system is a rigid retirement system, where one must retire upon reaching the retirement age. The 1978 State Council Document No. 104, which implemented the provisional measures for workers' retirement and resignation, used the phrase "should retire," which in fact means it is mandatory according to laws and regulations.

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Additionally, the implementation regulations of the Labor Contract Law stipulate that when a worker reaches the legal retirement age, the labor contract is terminated. However, in 2022, Jiangsu Province implemented a regulation that allows for a delay in retirement. This is done with the worker's application, the employer's consent, and filing with the human resources and social security department, allowing for a delay in retirement for at least one year.

However, generally speaking, unless one is a particularly scarce technical worker or senior management personnel, employers usually do not agree to delay retirement. After all, the continuation of a labor contract involves significant costs in management, benefits, and labor protection, and employers prefer to hire younger people.

The social insurance system generally requires that social insurance contributions made beyond the legal retirement age not be counted and should be refunded. Of course, if approved and agreed upon, that is another matter.What should be done if the payment period is less than 15 years?

If the payment period is less than 15 years, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) has clear regulations on the implementation of the Social Insurance Law, stating that one can extend the payment period to 15 years. In other words, one can delay retirement and continue to make payments. Since employers generally terminate labor contracts, in most cases, it is the individual's choice to participate in insurance and make payments as a flexible employment person until the 15-year requirement is met.

In 2016, the MHRSS's "Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Income and Expenditure of the Basic Pension Insurance Fund for Enterprise Employees" clarified that flexible employment personnel and urban individual industrial and commercial households are generally not allowed to increase the payment period by making up payments retroactively. However, there were special catch-up payment policies allowed by the state in 2020 and 2022, which are exceptions.

Is there a policy for one-time catch-up payments? It mainly falls into the following two situations:

1. If our personal account for the pension insurance was established before the implementation of the social insurance system (indicating that the individual has already participated in the insurance), one can make a one-time catch-up payment to complete the 15 years after extending the payment period for 5 years and still not reaching 15 years. The general practice is that if there is an interruption in the middle of the payment, the delay will continue. This is to prevent someone from making a payment for one month, then stopping the insurance, and then making a one-time catch-up payment when 5 years have passed.

2. If there is a confirmed labor relationship between the worker and the employer, and there were previous illegal acts by the employer, such as not paying social insurance on time and in full for employees, in this case, the worker can apply for catch-up payments through rights protection. Generally, it is necessary to have valid legal documents such as administrative documents from the labor security supervision department, labor relationship confirmation letters from the labor arbitration department, court judgments, and audit reports from the audit department. This type of catch-up payment requires the payment of a daily late fee of 0.05%.

Apart from the above two situations, one can only continue to make payments month by month. #Can employee pension insurance be paid in one lump sum?#