How to Access Finnish Company Financial Data from the PRH

Finland runs one of Europe's most usable company registers, and it is about to become one of the most machine-readable. The PRH Trade Register is free to search in full English, filed financial statements are public, and the register is tightly integrated with the tax administration through a shared business-information system — so identity, tax, and financial data resolve against a single business ID. Two things make Finland distinctive right now. First, enforcement has real teeth: since 2025 the PRH fines late and missing filings and strikes off persistent offenders, and it has been chasing tens of thousands of overdue accounts. Second, Finland is moving to mandatory structured (Inline XBRL) financial-statement filing from 2027, phased in by company type — a decisive step toward fully machine-readable company data across the economy. This guide explains what the register holds, what it costs, how the filing and audit regime works, the accounting frameworks, the coming XBRL shift, and the few limits to plan around.

The Finnish company landscape

Finland is a small, open, export-driven economy whose corporate value concentrates in a handful of globally significant companies sitting above a broad SME base. The defining sectors are forestry and forest products (UPM, Stora Enso, Metsä Group — the modern descendants of the industry that built the country), technology and telecoms (Nokia, plus a world-leading games cluster), industrial machinery (KONE elevators, Wärtsilä, Valmet, Metso, Konecranes), energy (Neste, a world leader in renewable fuels), and financial services (Nordea, Sampo). The state remains a significant owner through the holding company Solidium (below). Finland's games industry deserves its own mention: it turned over roughly €2.85 billion in 2024 across about 270 active studios, ranking among the top five in Europe and leading in mobile games, anchored by Supercell (Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars) and Rovio (Angry Birds). It is a cluster of mostly private Oy companies whose accounts sit in the register like any other — a reminder that some of Finland's most globally recognised businesses are unlisted and found only through their filed financial statements.

How many companies, and of what kind

The counts are precise and published. On 9 January 2026 the Trade Register held 728,137 entities, of which 309,714 were limited companies (osakeyhtiö) and 275,702 were private traders. The population has grown steadily — from 641,619 in January 2022 — driven almost entirely by limited companies and sole traders. Every entity carries a Business ID (Y-tunnus), the permanent identifier used across the register, the tax administration, and every other government system.

Two notes for a data consumer. The Oy is the workhorse, and the abolition of the €2,500 minimum in 2019 means registered share capital is now a near-useless proxy for substance — a large share of Oy companies formed since 2019 have nominal or zero capital by design. And co-operatives matter more in Finland than almost anywhere: the S Group dominates retail and the OP Group is a major banking force, so a Finnish "osuuskunta" can be a very large enterprise, not a marginal form.

Ownership: the state holding company and the co-operatives

Two features shape ownership at the top of the Finnish register. The first is Solidium, the state's investment holding company. Founded in 1991 and given its current mandate in 2008, Solidium manages the Finnish state's minority shareholdings in listed companies, holding stakes in a portfolio that has included Nokia, Stora Enso, Sampo, Elisa, Konecranes, Metso, Outokumpu, Tietoevry, and others, with a net asset value in the region of €8–9 billion. It sits as an active minority owner — taking board seats and pressing portfolio companies on governance — so a large share of Finland's blue-chip listed companies have the state, through Solidium, as a significant shareholder. The state also directly owns majority stakes in a few listed companies such as Fortum.

The second is the co-operative sector, which is unusually large in Finland. The S Group (a consumer co-operative) is the dominant force in Finnish retail, and the OP Group is a major co-operative banking group — both are enormous enterprises owned by their members rather than by shareholders. For ownership analysis this means two of the country's largest commercial organisations have no share register in the ordinary sense: mapping control means understanding the co-operative structure, not tracing shareholdings. As with Sweden's spheres, Denmark's foundations, and Austria's private foundations, the Finnish ownership picture has a structural feature that a share-based ownership graph alone will not capture.

Where Finnish financial statements live: the PRH Trade Register

Finnish company data sits in the Trade Register (Kaupparekisteri), maintained by the Finnish Patent and Registration Office (Patentti- ja rekisterihallitus, PRH). Its defining structural feature is integration with the tax administration: the PRH and the Finnish Tax Administration (Verohallinto) jointly run the Business Information System (YTJ / ytj.fi), so a single Business ID resolves a company's registration and tax data together. Statutory basis is the Trade Register Act (1979/129) and the Companies Act (624/2006).

• Company search is free, in full English, at both ytj.fi and prh.fi — no account, no local ID. You can search by Business ID, LEI, name, municipality, form, or line of business, and filter by valid or closed.
• The free extract covers identity and status (Business ID, name, legal form, registration date), domicile, business scope and financial year, capital, and the people in responsible roles — each identified by name and date of birth, not the confidential personal identity code.
• Filed financial statements are public. They can be ordered from the register; a certified Trade Register extract (Kaupparekisteriote) costs roughly €35–50.
• An open-data interface exposes registered-company data programmatically, with private traders excluded.

Filing: four months, and real enforcement

Finnish filing runs on the Accounting Act (Kirjanpitolaki) and the Companies Act. The rules that matter:

• Who files: limited companies (Oy and Oyj), co-operatives, and other registered entities must file financial statements — including companies that have ceased activity. Private traders generally file least and sit largely outside the public-accounts population.
• The deadline: financial statements must be registered with the Trade Register, in the standard case, within eight months of the end of the financial year — but they must first be adopted at the annual general meeting within six months, and filed with the PRH promptly after. In practice, for audited and tax purposes the working window is tight: many companies file within four months, and the statutory backstop is well inside the Austrian nine-month norm.
• Filing is digital, through ytj.fi.
• Enforcement is active. Since 2025 the PRH imposes a late-filing fee and can ultimately strike off companies that persistently fail to file. The register centre has publicly chased large backlogs — at one point around 35,000 financial statements still outstanding — and pursued them with fees rather than letting them lapse invisibly.

The coming shift: mandatory Inline XBRL from 2027

The single most important forward-looking fact about Finnish company data is the move to structured filing. From 2027, most Finnish companies will be required to file their financial statements in Inline XBRL — machine-readable structured format — rather than the PDFs that dominate today. Under the new framework, financial statements, management reports, audit reports, and audit confirmations will all be filed digitally in iXBRL.

• The obligation is phased: it starts with companies required to appoint an auditor, then extends about a year later to most limited companies and partnerships.
• To bring smaller firms along, the PRH plans a free conversion service for companies without digital accounting systems.
• The change implements EU company-law requirements, with the objective that all company accounts in the Finnish register become fully machine-readable.

Accounting standards, audit, and what a filing contains

A Finnish financial statement contains the income statement, balance sheet, notes, and — for larger entities — a management report and audit report. Both the income statement and balance sheet are filed; Finland does not strip the profit-and-loss account out of the standard limited-company filing, so revenue and profit are visible across the register.

• Finnish GAAP (FAS) — under the Accounting Act, used by most companies.
• IFRS — mandatory for the consolidated accounts of listed companies; optional for others.

Audit exemption

Audit is the default, but a company may omit an auditor if, in both the current and preceding financial year, no more than one of these thresholds was exceeded: balance-sheet total €100,000, turnover €200,000, and three employees on average. These are low thresholds by European standards, so many small Finnish companies are legitimately audit-exempt — whether a filing carries an auditor's report is therefore a meaningful, size-correlated quality signal. Audit-exempt companies still file.

Distributable funds and the solvency test

As across the Nordics, a Finnish balance sheet should not be read as if all equity were available for distribution. Under the Companies Act, a company may distribute only its distributable funds (jakokelpoiset varat) — broadly, retained earnings and other unrestricted equity, not share capital and tied reserves — and every distribution is additionally subject to a statutory solvency test: a dividend may not be paid if it is known, or should be known, that the company is insolvent or that the distribution would cause insolvency. The test looks past the balance sheet to actual ability to pay. For a data consumer, two things follow: the equity line splits into distributable and restricted components, and a distribution that looks affordable on the numbers can still be prohibited by the solvency test — so the interplay of distributable funds, declared dividends, and liquidity is a genuine signal of both payout capacity and financial health.

Tax: what the accounts sit on

Finland's corporate income tax is a flat 20%, one of the more straightforward regimes in this series. Points that shape the numbers:

• VAT rose to a 25.5% standard rate in September 2024 (from 24%), among the higher rates in the EU, with reduced rates below.
• Dividend withholding is 20% for corporate recipients and higher for individuals, reducible under treaties and EU directives.
• Because the corporate rate is flat and stable, Finnish effective-tax-rate analysis is cleaner than in jurisdictions with resource-rent surcharges (Norway) or a moving headline rate (Austria).

Listed companies: Nasdaq Helsinki

Finland's exchange is Nasdaq Helsinki, part of the Nasdaq Nordic group, complemented by the Nasdaq First North Growth Market. The main-market listed population numbers on the order of 130 to 150 companies, led by names that mirror the economy: Nokia and telecoms, the forest-products majors UPM and Stora Enso, industrial engineers KONE, Wärtsilä, Valmet, Metso and Konecranes, energy group Neste, and financials Nordea and Sampo. In 2025 the Helsinki exchange reached a 25-year high, driven substantially by AI-related demand lifting Nokia. Listed companies report consolidated accounts under IFRS with market supervision by the Financial Supervisory Authority (Finanssivalvonta, FIN-FSA). As across this series, the listed population is a thin slice of the register: the overwhelming majority of Finnish financial data comes from the accounts of private Oy companies filed with the PRH.

Regulators, the central bank, and the euro

Financial supervision sits with the Financial Supervisory Authority (Finanssivalvonta, FIN-FSA), which regulates banks, insurers, investment firms, and the securities market, and operates administratively in connection with the Bank of Finland (Suomen Pankki). Finland is a founding eurozone member — the only Nordic country in the euro — so monetary policy is ECB, the Bank of Finland is part of the Eurosystem, and the largest banks fall under ECB banking supervision through the Single Supervisory Mechanism. The practical consequence for data work is the familiar one: banks, insurers, and pension institutions report under sector-specific rules outside ordinary Finnish GAAP, so their statements are not directly comparable with those of commercial companies. Finland's eurozone membership also means the accounts are all in euro, removing the currency-translation step that Sweden, Denmark, and Norway's non-euro krona and krone require.

Insolvency: the highest of the century

Finnish insolvency data is public and official, published monthly by Statistics Finland, and the recent cycle has been severe. Finland recorded 3,006 business bankruptcies in 2024 — the highest annual figure of the 21st century — with filings up across nearly all sectors, driven by weak domestic demand, higher interest rates, and post-pandemic pressure on construction, retail, and hospitality. The pace stayed elevated into 2025: in the third week of January 2025, 128 companies filed in a single week, the highest weekly figure of the decade.

A data-quality note worth carrying: as in Austria, Finnish insolvency counts vary between sources and measures. Statistics Finland reports bankruptcies filed, and its 3,006 figure for 2024 differs from counts published by commercial providers on slightly different bases, and from proceedings instigated or restructuring series that track different events. When quoting Finnish insolvency numbers, name the source and the measure — comparing a filings figure from one year to a proceedings figure from another manufactures a trend that is not there.

For risk work, company status flows through the register: a company can be shown as active, in liquidation (selvitystila), bankrupt (konkurssi), in restructuring (yrityssaneeraus), or removed. Statistics Finland publishes both bankruptcy filings and restructuring proceedings monthly, so current figures are always available at source. The severity of the current cycle makes status-checking at the point of use more than a formality.

Four pitfalls in Finnish financial data workflows

Pitfall 1: Reading share capital as substance

Since the €2,500 minimum was abolished in 2019, a large share of Oy companies are formed with nominal or zero capital. Registered capital no longer signals size or seriousness; ignore it as a proxy and read the accounts.

Pitfall 2: Expecting full people data

Officers and owners are keyed to the confidential Finnish personal identity code, but the public record shows only name and date of birth. For foreign officers especially, expect thin identification verified once at registration — plan supplementary verification for KYC.

Pitfall 3: Assuming one filing format through the XBRL transition

From 2027 the register moves to Inline XBRL in phases. A Finnish dataset spanning the transition will mix PDFs and structured filings; build a pipeline that handles both rather than assuming a clean cut-over.

Pitfall 4: Treating private traders as covered

Sole traders (toiminimi) file least and are excluded from the open-data interface. Scope coverage to registered companies, not "all businesses" — the smallest operators sit outside the public financial record.

How Finland compares to other Nordic registers

Finland sits alongside the strong Nordic open registers, with two differentiators: unusually clean entity resolution thanks to the shared PRH–tax business ID, and a register in transition to structured filing. Once iXBRL is fully in force, Finland will join Denmark at the machine-readable frontier; today it is a free, well-enforced, mostly-PDF register moving decisively in that direction.

What's free, what costs money, and where to find it

Frequently asked questions

Is Finnish company financial data publicly available?

Yes. Limited companies and other registered entities must file financial statements with the PRH Trade Register, and the filed statements are public. Company search is free in full English at ytj.fi and prh.fi with no account, and an open-data interface exposes registered-company data programmatically (private traders excluded).

Where do I find a Finnish company's financial statements?

Through the PRH Trade Register (prh.fi) and the joint Business Information System at ytj.fi. Search by Business ID (Y-tunnus) or name; basic data is free, and filed financial statements can be ordered from the register. A certified extract costs roughly €35–50.

Is the Finnish Trade Register free?

Search and basic company data are free, in English, Finnish, and Swedish, with no account or local ID required. Certified extracts (around €35–50) and some filed documents carry small fees. The open-data API for registered companies is free.

When must Finnish companies file their financial statements?

Financial statements must be adopted at the annual general meeting within six months of the financial year-end and registered with the Trade Register shortly after, with a statutory backstop of eight months and many companies filing within about four. Since 2025 the PRH imposes late-filing fees and can strike off persistent non-filers.

Is Finland moving to structured (XBRL) financial statements?

Yes. From 2027, most Finnish companies must file financial statements in Inline XBRL — machine-readable structured format — covering the statements, management report, and audit report. The obligation is phased, beginning with companies that must appoint an auditor and extending to most limited companies and partnerships about a year later, with a free PRH conversion service for smaller firms.

What is the minimum share capital for a Finnish Oy?

There is none. The €2,500 minimum for a private limited company (osakeyhtiö) was abolished on 1 July 2019, so an Oy can be registered with zero share capital. A public limited company (Oyj) still requires €80,000. Because so many Oy companies now have nominal capital, registered capital is not a useful proxy for company size or substance.

Do Finnish companies use IFRS or local GAAP?

Listed companies must use IFRS for their consolidated accounts. Most other companies use Finnish GAAP (FAS) under the Accounting Act, with IFRS available as an option. Financial-sector entities follow sector-specific rules under FIN-FSA supervision.

Which Finnish companies are exempt from audit?

A company may omit an auditor if, in both the current and preceding year, no more than one of these was exceeded: balance-sheet total €100,000, turnover €200,000, and three employees on average. These thresholds are low, so many small companies are audit-exempt, though they still file financial statements.

How do I find who owns or runs a Finnish company?

The Trade Register lists board members and, where applicable, the managing director and others in responsible roles, each identified by name and date of birth rather than the confidential personal identity code. This makes disambiguation harder for common names and for foreign officers, and the details are verified at registration.

How many company bankruptcies were there in Finland in 2024?

Finland recorded 3,006 business bankruptcies in 2024, the highest annual figure of the 21st century according to Statistics Finland, with filings up across nearly all sectors. The pace stayed elevated into 2025 — one week in January 2025 saw 128 filings, the highest weekly figure of the decade. Statistics Finland publishes bankruptcy and restructuring figures monthly, so current numbers are always available at source.

Who owns Finland's largest companies?

Two structural features dominate. The state's investment holding company, Solidium, manages minority stakes in many listed blue chips — including Nokia, Stora Enso, Sampo, Elisa, and others — so the state is a significant shareholder across much of the Helsinki market, and it directly owns majority stakes in a few companies such as Fortum. Separately, two of Finland's largest commercial organisations — the S Group in retail and the OP Group in banking — are co-operatives owned by their members, with no ordinary share register, so mapping their control means understanding the co-operative structure rather than tracing shareholdings.

Does the PRH have a company data API?

Yes. The PRH publishes an open-data interface exposing registered-company data programmatically, with private traders excluded. Combined with the coming move to Inline XBRL from 2027, Finnish company data is becoming increasingly machine-readable. MonetaiQ builds on the PRH and YTJ to deliver normalised Finnish financials in English via a single API or bulk feed.