New online services and a huge increase in notifications to the Trade Register
All indicators in the Trade Register were upwards in 2019.
There was further growth in notification totals: the number of new companies established during the year was more than 1,000 higher than in 2018. The number of notifications of changes and financial statements submitted to the Trade Register also went up.
In a major change to the process of establishing a limited liability company, the legal requirement for a minimum share capital of 2,500 euros was abolished in July 2019.
The PRH continued to apply oversight to the submitting of financial statements. About 24,000 limited liability companies and co-operatives that had not submitted their financial statements despite our requests to do so were removed from the Trade Register.
The PRH registered Finland’s first electronic financial statements in April 2019.
A number of new online notification services were introduced during the year.
Housing companies are now established online
At the beginning of the year, the PRH introduced an online notification form for establishing housing companies and mutual real estate limited companies. There were also changes to submitting online notifications of articles of association.
The details of new housing companies are now transferred directly from the Trade Register to the register of housing company units maintained by the National Land Survey of Finland.
All details of the housing company units and their ownership and mortgaging are entered in the new register.
Companies can now choose to submit their notifications online only
The option at ytj.fi of submitting future Trade Register notifications only online has been available to companies since spring 2019. The new service has been well received.
Nordic Smart Government is in response to the Government Programme
Under the Government Programme published in June 2019, Finland aims to become the pioneer in real-time economy.
In practice, this means that information on transactions can be transferred electronically and in real time between companies and from companies to the authorities.
We promoted the real-time economy in the Nordic Smart Government 3.0 project. The PRH, the Finnish Tax Administration and the State Treasury are the Finnish partners in this Nordic project. The project will be concluded in spring 2020.
Notification of beneficial owners now in use
The notification of beneficial owners was added to the online service at ytj.fi in July.
In this connection, the information service was also made available to parties that need information on beneficial owners for purposes laid down in the Finnish Act on Money Laundering.
Beneficial owners are usually owners of the company.
The obligation to submit a notification of beneficial owners to the Trade Register applies to about 300,000 companies, which includes all limited liability companies.
