Further increase in the number of Trade Register notifications

After a steep rise in 2020, the number of Trade Register notifications was again growing at a more moderate rate as the number of notifications of beneficial owners stabilised.

There was a slight increase in the number of company start-up notifications, notifications of changes and notifications of financial statements compared with 2020.

More company start-up notifications submitted to the Trade Register

The number of start-up notifications to the Trade Register increased: 41,491 notifications in 2021 and 40,253 notifications in 2020.

Processed start-up notifications

The number of processed start-up notifications increased: 41,763 notifications in 2021 and 39,634 notifications in 2020.

Processed notifications of changes

The number of processed notifications of changes increased: 236,426 notifications in 2021 and 234,320 notifications in 2020.

Processed notifications of beneficial owners

The number of processed notifications of beneficial owners decreased: 36,347 notifications in 2021 and 128,315 notifications in 2020.

Matters related to enterprise mortgages

The number of processed matters related to enterprise mortgages increased slightly: 4,565 matters in 2021 and 4,558 matters in 2020.

Preparing for legislative changes

During the year, we made preparations for a number of legislative changes concerning the Trade Register.

The Trade Register Act and the Business Information Act will be updated in compliance with two EU directives and the changes will enter into force in August 2022. The changes will help trade register information to move more freely between the EU Member States in the future.

We also made preparations for a comprehensive overhaul of the Trade Register Act, one aim of which is to improve the timeliness and reliability of the information kept in the register.

As part of the preparations, we updated the information kept in the Trade Register by correcting the company forms of 8,500 mutual real estate companies and by adding 19,000 missing financial year entries. We removed from the register about 10,000 companies that had failed to meet their reporting obligations.

Under legislative reforms, the PRH must be able to receive most of the trade register notifications online. For this reason, we prepared updates for online notifications in our information systems and the BIS service.

More comprehensive financial statements

It is in the interest of society at large and the parties that need financial statements of companies that as many companies as possible submit their financial statements to the Trade Register.

Over the past years, we have taken a broad range of different measures to ensure this. They include informing and reminding companies of their obligation to submit financial statements and, ultimately, ordering companies to submit financial statements on pain of a fine or removal from the register.

As in previous years, a large number of financial statements were submitted and in 2021, the PRH received financial statements from nearly 90 per cent of the companies required to do so.

Financial statements submitted to the Trade Register

The number of financial statements submitted to the Trade Register increased: 228,987 financial statements in 2021 and 226,581 financial statements in 2020.

Company name revocation now a PRH responsibility

From May 2021, the PRH has been responsible for processing applications for company name revocations.

The PRH can revoke the registration of a company name in full or in part.

Business prohibition entries now transmitted to the Trade Register online

In June 2021, the PRH and the Legal Register Centre established a link between their systems. Under this arrangement, the details of persons subject to a business prohibition are now transmitted from the Legal Register Centre to the Trade Register online.

The details of the business prohibition can be viewed in the trade register system and the entries in the trade register extract.