The Finnish Tax Administration will open the Positive Credit Register in two stages. From February 2024 onwards, lenders will report information on consumer credit and equivalent loans to the register. The related information can be used from 1 April 2024.
In the second stage, from December 2025, lenders will report on credit and loans they have granted to private persons in non-consumer roles, as well as to consumers. In practice, this means credit and loans granted to private traders. Second-stage information will be available from the register from 1 April 2026.
The Positive Credit Register is being created to prevent over-indebtedness among households. It will provide us with information on private persons’ credit and income over the last 12 months.
What will we use the register for in the first stage?
The Act on the Positive Credit Register (739/2022) determines the purposes for which information can be obtained from the register. Such information cannot be used in relation to credit and loans beyond the scope of the Consumer Protection Act, which requires lenders to assess consumers’ creditworthiness before making credit or loan agreements. At OP Financial Group, we will use the Positive Credit Register in accordance with the related Acts.
We will use information on the register to assess our customers’ creditworthiness when we are deciding whether to grant
- secured and unsecured consumer financing
- consumer-customer card-based credit
- vendor cooperation financing, such as car loans.
The register will give a reliable overview of the customer’s indebtedness and income. This will enable us to assess our customers’ repayment capacity in a more balanced and precise way than before, improving our assessments and promoting responsible lending and credit management.
We’ll tell you if we use your register information
If a lender intends to use a natural person’s Positive Credit Register information (e.g. if the person is applying for credit or a loan), the lender must inform the person of this in advance. A natural person is an individual human being; in this case, they would often be a loan applicant, borrower, loan guarantor or a third party pledging collateral.
If we reject a natural person’s credit or loan application on the basis of information we obtained from the register, we will immediately inform them that we used register information. We will also specify the register from which we got the information.
Lenders’ use of credit reports from the Positive Credit Register (when complying with their creditworthiness assessment obligation) will be supervised by the Consumer Ombudsman and Financial Supervisory Authority.