The Finnish Social Security institution (Kela) reported about a few changes in its services that will take place during 2020.
Fewer mailing addresses as of 1 January
From the start of the new year Kela will centralise the scanning of applications and supporting documentation from individual customers to one place.
Henceforth, applications and supporting documents can be sent to the address: Kela, PO Box 10, 00056 KELA.
Kela explained that by reducing the number of mailing addresses intends to ease the processes for the customers, as the customer no longer needs to know to which regional scanning centre the documents should be sent.
Mail that is sent to the old addresses will be redirected to the correct addresses for one year.
Changes to phone numbers as of 21 January
In January, Kela’s phone numbers in Finnish and Swedish will change. The change concerns the phone services for individual customers. The phone service numbers in English will remain the same.
New phone service numbers
The new service numbers will be published on the Kela.fi website on 21 January 2020. Should a customer call an old service number by mistake, he or she will be instructed to call the new number.
Phone service in Russian, Somali and Arabic will close
Kela announced that after Christmas the national phone services in Russian, Somali and Arabic will be closed.
Even so, customers will get services in other languages than Finnish, Swedish or English, but only if the Social Security's personnel consider it necessary. During the last couple of years, Kela has recruited customer service personnel who speak other languages.
Kela’s customers are also entitled to interpretation services if it is not possible to handle matters with Kela in the customer’s mother tongue and if there is no common language with Kela’s customer service personnel.
In these cases, Kela can organize a professional interpreter for the customer.
An e-service usable with mobiles
During 2020 Kela’s e-service will be "modernized".
According to the Social Security, "the goal is a user-friendly and technically accessible e-service, which can be used with mobile devices."
For that purpose, different parts of the e-service will be updated at different times of the year, which means that the visual appearance in different parts of the e-service may vary.
"Once the work is finished, the whole e-service will have the same blue-and-white appearance," Kela says.
Changes in opening hours as of 1 February
From the beginning of February the opening hours of some customer locations will change.
Kela says more information will be provided in the following days.
