Voluntary social insurance is being improved in the direction of reducing access conditions, expanding benefits and increasing support from the state budget.
With the 2024 Law on Social Insurance reducing the minimum number of years of contribution to receive pensions from 20 years to 15 years, supplementing maternity allowance regimes, and policies to support higher contributions from the budget, informal workers have more opportunities to participate, maintain the contribution process and accumulate to receive pensions when they are old.
This is a group of workers with very large social security needs but income is often unstable, jobs are flexible, and it is difficult to participate in compulsory social insurance.
Therefore, developing voluntary social insurance is not only a task of expanding social insurance coverage, but also an important solution to ensure long-term social security for farmers, freelancers, small traders, people working without labor contracts and vulnerable groups.
Ensuring the rights of participants
Vietnam Social Security has closely followed the resolutions of the Party, National Assembly, Government and the direction of the Ministry of Finance; promptly concretized targets and tasks to be implemented throughout the system; and at the same time coordinated with ministries, branches, Party committees, and local authorities in developing voluntary social insurance participants.
Through this, the targets of Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW set out until 2025 have basically been achieved, in which the highlight is the target of developing voluntary social insurance participants.
This result reflects synchronous efforts from perfecting policies, increasing contribution support, innovating communication to service organizations serving people.
Along with the development of participants, the work of resolving and paying social insurance and unemployment insurance benefits continues to be implemented promptly and in accordance with procedures and regulations.
Statistics from Vietnam Social Security show that by the end of March 2026, the whole country will pay monthly pensions and social insurance allowances to more than 3.5 million people; an increase of nearly 410,000 people compared to 2018, equivalent to an increase of 13.23%.
The implementation of decrees on adjusting pensions, social insurance allowances, and monthly allowances is also being implemented promptly, contributing to ensuring the rights of beneficiaries.
This is an important practical basis for people to see more clearly the value of participating in social insurance: contributing while still capable of working to have an income support when old.
Vietnam Social Security has promoted online public service provision, restructuring nghiệp vụ processes, connecting and sharing data with ministries, branches, and localities.
These innovations help people and businesses access policies more conveniently, reducing time, paperwork and compliance costs. By the end of 2025, Vietnam Social Security has provided 84 online public services for all 25 administrative procedures under its authority; including 70 full online public services and integrated into the National Public Service Portal.
As of March 2026, the Vietnam Social Security system has verified more than 100.2 million citizen information in the database managed by Vietnam Social Security with the National Population Database; and at the same time deployed health insurance medical examination and treatment using chip-based citizen identification cards at 100% of health insurance medical examination and treatment facilities.
These results not only facilitate people when using services, but also help the management and development of policy participants and beneficiaries become more transparent, accurate, and effective.
In the context of population aging, the labor market is changing rapidly, and the number of informal workers is still large, developing voluntary social insurance is a long-term task.
When workers understand their rights, are supported by the State with a part of the contribution level and are served more conveniently, voluntary social insurance policies will have more conditions to become a sustainable support for millions of people in their old age.
After more than 7 years of implementing Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW, the number of people participating in voluntary social insurance has increased rapidly. In which:
- In 2018, the whole country had 277,190 people participating in voluntary social insurance; by 2019, it increased to 558,109 people, equivalent to an increase of 101.3% compared to 2018.
- From 2020 to 2025, the number of participants continued to increase year by year; by the end of 2025, it reached 2,619,258 people, an increase of 13.83% compared to 2024, reaching 5.49% of the working age population.
