Housing company loans will also be reported to the Positive credit register in the future

The objective of the Positive credit register is to effectively prevent households from taking on too much debt. To support the objective, the register will be developed further and its data content will be expanded in the future. The objective is that data on shareholder-specific shares of housing company loans would also be saved in the register and be available to lenders in the future.

The Positive credit register was launched in April 2024. In the first stage, data on consumer credits and loans comparable to them were reported to the register. In the second stage, lenders will also report loans granted to individuals other than consumers, i.e. loans related to private individuals’ business activities. Lenders can start using this data on 1 April 2026. Further, the Parliament has also decided to grant funding to the register’s third stage of development, where data on shareholder-specific shares of housing company loans will be reported to the register. The schedule for the reporting and using of housing company loan data will be specified during the preparation of the legislation.

Towards a more comprehensive register for preventing over-indebtedness

The Positive credit register currently contains data on around 14 million loans. Lenders use the register actively, requesting around 550,000 credit register extracts per month. Private individuals have also found the register: they have logged in to the register’s e-service almost 900,000 times after the register’s launch. In the e-service, individuals can also set a voluntary ban on credits for themselves to prevent the misuse of their personal data, for example. By the end of September 2024, approximately 34,000 voluntary bans on credits had been set.

“It is great to receive a decision that the register's data content will be further expanded so soon after the launch. In future, lenders will receive an increasingly comprehensive view of the borrower's financial situation, and private individuals will also have a better view of their own loans,” says Mirkka Piirainen, Senior Adviser.

The housing company loans will be added to the register to expand the scope of the register's data content. After all, housing-related debts account for the majority of household debt.

“At the end of December 2023, the household debt totalled around €173 billion, of which €107 billion, or 62 per cent, was attributable to home loans. Housing company loans totalled around €23 billion, or 13 per cent. In other words, housing company loans form a significant part of the household debt. Around three quarters of the household debt is attributable to housing,” says Mirkka Piirainen.

When housing company loans are included in the Positive credit register, lenders will have access to more comprehensive information on which they can base their assessment of households’ creditworthiness.

“On the other hand, the information is also important to authorities that use the register's data to monitor and supervise financial stability and the credit market,” says Mirkka Piirainen.

How the expansion proceeds

The present Act on the Positive credit register does not cover data on shareholder-specific shares of housing company loans. At the beginning of 2024, the Ministry of Justice launched a project aimed at preparing legislative amendments that enable the inclusion of shareholder-specific shares of housing company loans in the Positive credit register and the disclosure of their data to lenders and supervisory authorities. The Government proposal is scheduled to be submitted to the Parliament in autumn 2025.

In practice, the expansion means that the data on the shareholder-specific shares of housing company loans recorded in the Residential and Commercial Property Information System will be transferred to the Positive credit register. The National Land Survey of Finland has an ongoing project about this. The Incomes Register Unit will also start preparing for the expansion of the register and continue to work in close cooperation with the National Land Survey of Finland.

We will tell you more about the progress of the project as the schedules are set.

Read also

• Website of the Ministry of Justice: Transfer of data on housing companies’ shareholder-specific shares to the Positive credit register (in Finnish and Swedish)