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Pension question, Iceland

Do foreign workers keep their Icelandic pension fund rights?

The occupational funds are the substance: Act 129/1997 sets the minimum contribution at no less than 15.5 per cent of the contribution base, membership is both a right and a duty for employees and the self employed, and Article 19 bars a fund's own rules from reducing or extinguishing rights already earned. The fund keeps that entitlement and pays it, wherever the member later lives.

  • Source: althingi.is, island.is, employment-social-affairs.ec.europa.eu, read 4 October 2026

What to do next

  1. List each Icelandic employer and the years you worked there, with your kennitala if you had one.
  2. Look for the name of a pension fund on old Icelandic payslips.
  3. Run our free check to see which other countries may hold a pension in your name.

Check your own working life for free

Tell us where you worked. The free check shows which countries may hold a pension for you, and which can be ruled out and why. No sign in, no charge.

Run the free check

Questions people also ask

Is there one overview of every fund?

Lifeyrisgattin, the gateway the funds themselves present as a single overview of a working life, opens only to Icelandic electronic ID, and each of the seventeen participating funds runs its own member portal with its own separate login.

  • Source: lifeyrismal.is, greidslustofa.is, island.is, read 4 October 2026

Do you give advice on what to do?

No. We identify where a pension is likely held and the official route to it, and we name each source with the date we read it. We do not give financial, tax or legal advice.