The Finnish Patent and Registration Office (PRH) achieved its goals for 2024 almost in full. The number of notifications and applications remained high, but the revenue from handling fees remained below the budget.

Our finances are currently in balance, but the financial situation is anticipated to become more difficult in the next few years. An important factor are the decisions on savings in central government finances. The ever-increasing demands for developing services and functions mean a need for system investments and maintenance costs. It is not possible to finance all investment needs with the current fees for applications and notifications. As budget funding becomes stricter, new development projects must be carefully assessed.

In surveys conducted during the year, our customers’ satisfaction with the PRH’s services and the service’s compliance with customer needs remained at a very good level.

The overall rating of job satisfaction decreased slightly, but was still clearly above the central government average.

This year, we will assess our strategy in the light of changes in the operating environment. We highlighted four themes as topical priorities in the strategy: artificial intelligence, information systems and cloud services, ways of working, and economic balance. In addition to tightening central government finances, the development of legislation on EU company law, industrial property rights, digitalisation, artificial intelligence and information security will affect our operating environment in the next few years.

We got a new mission. In accordance with the legislative amendment adopted by Parliament in 2024, we will be responsible for coordinating the digital financial administration network and co-development for businesses from the beginning of 2025. The new task was organised as part of the PRH’s permanent tasks.

The new task is a continuation of the Real-Time Economy project, the coordination of which we were responsible for in 2021–2024. The aim of the project was to create preconditions for a digital economy in which the processing of business transactions and transfer of information are based on defined structured information across different actors. 

The work of the project was completed as planned and all the objectives set were achieved. The project outputs were handed over to the parties responsible for further work, which in addition to the PRH are the State Treasury, the Finnish Tax Administration, and Statistics Finland.