Structural business and financial statement statistics: documentation of statistics
Basic data of the statistics
Data description
Statistical population
The structural business and financial statement statistics are based on the business tax data of the Finnish Tax Administration, Incomes Register, the FINREP and VAKRA data of the Financial Supervisory Authority and the inquiries carried out among enterprises by Statistics Finland. The business tax data contain financial statements data on all enterprises and persons carrying on a business under the Business Tax Act. The structural inquiries among enterprises produce information on the number of wage and salary earners and industries. The financial statements inquiries carried out by Statistics Finland produce detailed information on enterprises’ turnover, expenditure and investments.
Statistical unit
Legal units include:
- persons carrying on a business, trade or profession in their own name, or in the name of a registered firm
- legal persons (such as limited liability company, limited partnership, general partnership, cooperative, savings bank and economic association)
- market-based enterprises.
Unit of measure
Base period
Reference period
Reference area
Sector coverage
Marked-based enterprises engaged in agriculture, forestry and fishery (industry A) that have had income from agriculture, other turnover, personnel, other operating income, investments, or balance sheet during the statistical reference year are included in the statistics. Only personal data on agriculture are comprehensively included in the statistics.
For industry 02, the units that have had income from forestry, other turnover, personnel, other operating income, investments, or balance sheet during the statistical reference year are included in the statistics.
From 2021 onwards turnover and value added are published for financial and insurance activities (TOL K) on top of the number of enterprises and the number of personnel. EU grant funding has been received for the renewal of statistics compilation in 2020 to 2022.
There are two small enterprises engaged in the manufacture of tobacco products (TOL 12000). The data on these enterprises are not published for the industry they represent, and neither enterprise is included in the combined figures for all industries. Publishing these data would lead to the protection of data on industries that are significantly more important. Financial statements of enterprises are published for industries B to S Financial statement statistics for credit institutions, investment service companies, life insurance and non-life insurance companies can be found from separate database tables. These tables include only companies that are supervised by the Financial Supervisory Authority. Thus the tables do not cover for example foreign filiates operating in Finland. With a few exceptions, the financial statement data for industries B to S excl. K are published by main category and at the 2-digit level of the Standard Industrial Classification.
Time coverage
The financial statement statistics on credit institutions, statistics on investment service
companies and statistics on insurance activities have been added to the structural business and financial statement statistics at fall 2022. In the process, the content of the database
tables was narrowed down. Financial statement data on credit institutions will no longer be published by bank group. In future, data on credit institutions and investment service companies will be released only once a year instead of the previous quarterly publication. Concerning insurance activities, neither data on employment pension schemes nor more detailed data on investments will in future be published in the database tables. Appendix tables of the statistics will no longer be published either. In future, the statistics will not include data on branches abroad. The financial statement statistics on credit institutions, statistics on investment service companies and statistics on insurance activities can be found from the structural business and financial statement statistics starting from the data for year 2021. The old publications and time series of the statistics will be retained and they are available on the old pages of the statistics. For insurance activities the data can be found starting from year 2012.
Data on financial statements produced by credit institutions in accordance with a uniform financial statement formula have been produced since the beginning of 1995. From 1974 to 1995, data on financial statements produced by credit institutions were produced so that financing companies and credit companies were no included in the uniform frame because these were not yet covered by the harmonised credit institution legislation. Before 1974, a separate publication was produced for each banking group, the content of which also differed to some extent in respect of the financial statement formula. Statistics Finland has been publishing bank statistics on all banking groups starting from the data for 1970. The journey of bank statistics started in the 1868 statistics on savings banks, which was a report of the inspector of savings banks on their state and management.
At the beginning of 2005, a new IAS/IFRS accounting standard was introduced for financial reporting by investment service companies. Financial statements of investment service companies produced in accordance with a uniform financial statement formula prior to 2005 are available for the years 1998 to 2004 on a quarterly and annual basis. No consistent consolidated financial statements data are available for previous years.
The data are not regularly revised. Data for years prior to the newest statistical year is updated as required in connection with the regular statistical releases. Notice of the updates is informed in the footnotes of the database tables.
Financial statements data can be found in Statistics Finland’s StatFin database for the period from 1999 to 2012. Data for years prior to 1998 are available in paper publications for the period from 1974 to 1998.
Annual data entered in the Business Register are contained in Statistics Finland’s StatFin database for the period from 1993 to 2012. Data for the years before 1993 are available as paper publications.
Frequency of dissemination
Concepts
Assets covering technical provision
Business ID (Identity code)
The Business ID consists of seven numbers, a hyphen and a control number.
Change in the provision for outstanding claims
Change in the provision for unearned premiums
Claims incurred
Claims paid
Co-operative society
Corporation subject to taxation
Derivative instruments
Direct insurance
Earned premium
Enterprise
Enterprise corresponds to legal unit, if the legal unit is not part of an enterprise group. Otherwise, the enterprise is an enterprise group or part of one.
The definition of enterprise is based on the EU regulation concerning statistical units (EEC) 696/93.
Enterprise Group Register
Enterprise group
Cf. group of enterprises.
Equalisation provision
Foundation
Funds also belong to this category of legal form.
General partnership
Inventories
Materials and supplies refer to the commodities which have been acquired for the purpose of manufacturing current assets by a party obliged to keep books and engaged in manufacturing or service provision. These commodities include the raw materials and materials and auxiliary substances used in the production of goods or services.
Work in progress refers to commodities intended for sale or for use in service production, whose manufacturing process is not finished at the time of the closing of the accounts (semi-finished goods).
Finished goods refer to self manufactured commodities that can be assigned, sold or used in service production. Goods refer to commodities from external suppliers that are intended for sale or for use in service production as they are.
Other current assets refer to commodities bought or manufactured for the purpose of selling them as such or after further processing which are not included in the above mentioned current assets items. Other current assets may include, among others, lots or other property intended for sale which have been transferred from fixed assets to current assets.
Advance payments refer to purchase prices or parts thereof paid to the supplier of current assets commodities before receiving the commodities.
Legal form
Statistics Finland's classification of legal forms is based on this system and on the Tax Administration's coding of legal forms. Some of the Tax Administration's categories have been combined in Statistics Finland's classification.
Legal unit
Legal units are, for example, limited companies, private practitioners of trade, co-operative societies, state-owned companies and foundations.
Liabilities
Limited partnership
Mutual interest bodies
Natural person
This group includes own-account workers, sole proprietors, most agricultural and forestry entrepreneurs, as well as practitioners of trade.
Number of employees
Labour input for self-employed persons is calculated as the input the owner of an enterprise or his/her family member makes into the enterprise without actual remuneration.
For enterprises not included in the surveys of the Register of Enterprises and Establishments numbers of employees are estimated from data on wages and salaries.
Other assets
Personnel expenses
Personnel expenses comprise wages and salaries subject to withholding of tax and comparable expenses, as well as expenses determined direct based on wage or salary, such as social security contributions, statutory and voluntary personal insurance contributions and pension expenses.
Other voluntary personnel expenses come under other operating expenses.
Premium income
Provision for outstanding claims
Provision for unearned premiums
Reinsurance
Assumed reinsurance refers to insurance business received by an insurance company from another insurance company. Ceded reinsurance, which is visible in the profit and loss account as reinsurers’ shares, refers to the share of insurance business transferred to another insurance company.
Technical provisions
Type of ownership
Private domestic
State
Municipality
Region of Åland
Foreign-owned
Other type of ownership.
Unit-linked insurances
Voluntary association
Accuracy, reliability and timeliness
Overall accuracy
Timeliness
Punctuality
Comparability
Comparability - geographical
Comparability - over time
Starting from the statistical reference year 2021, the data on the number of personnel and wage and salary sum in the statistics have been calculated with a new method using the new Incomes Register data. Starting from the statistical reference year 2021, the estimated profit and loss account data of enterprises subject to the Tax Administration’s estimated assessment will be included in the statistics. Previously, these enterprises' profit and loss accounts were not included in
the statistics. Due to the renewals, the data is not fully comparable with earlier years.
Starting from the statistical reference year 2021, data on branches abroad concerning the largest units have been removed from the statistics. The change causes a break in the time series for some industries compared to previous years.
Temporal comparability of the data in archive is weakened by changes concerning industries, and changes in the Accounting Act and Accounting Decree. There were significant changes in forming the statistics from 2013 onwards, which causes a break in the time series for some of the variables and indutries.
Coherence - cross domain
Coherence - internal
companies and statistics on insurance activities are based on the international IFRS 9 accounting standard whereas the financial statement data for other industries are based on the Finnish Accounting Standards (FAS). The financial statement formula is also in other ways significantly different for the financial and insurance companies than for other industries. Because of these differences the the financial statement statistics on credit institutions, statistics on investment service companies and statistics on insurance activities are published in independent database tables separate from the rest of the industries.
Source data and data collections
Source data
Finnish Tax Administration registers
Business start and end data, home municipality, preliminary industry of new enterprises, and wages and salaries are obtained from the Finnish Tax Administration registers. The register data are supplied to Statistics Finland once a month.
Business tax data of the Finnish Tax Administration
The business tax data contain profit and loss account and balance sheet data, as well as data on investments in fixed assets. The data are supplied on main tax forms 4, 5, 6A, 6B, 6C and 6U and on appendix forms 7A, 7M and 62. The forms contain data on enterprises that have been liable to pay taxes in the year in question. The business tax data are supplied to Statistics Finland on previously agreed dates. There are approximately ten data deliveries each year.
Statistics Finland’s own data collections
Each year, Statistics Finland collects data from approximately 5,500 enterprises by means of a financial statements inquiry (TILKES). All enterprises with more than 60 employees or turnover over EUR 40 million or a balance sheet of more than EUR 300 million are included in the financial statements inquiry. Enterprises employing between 10 and 60 persons are selected for the inquiry by means of random sampling. A small number of enterprises with fewer than ten employees and all market-based municipal enterprises are also included in the inquiry. The purpose of the inquiry is to collect data that are more detailed than the figures included in the enterprises’ official financial statements. The inquiry covers specific turnover and cost data, investment data and other additional data on financial statements.
The information of enterprises’ and institutions’ establishments address, name, the number of wage and salary earners in person-years, industry, and the starting date, the ending date and the date of transition of business is collected in the Business Register Inquiry on establishment.
The inquiry annually covers approximately 13,000 enterprises and institutions. The inquiries are sent yearly to enterprises and institutions working in several different addresses and employing at least 5 person-years. Approximately every three years the enquiry is sent to enterprises and institutions working in only one establishment.
The number of wage and salary earners in enterprises not included in the surveys and in enterprises who have not answered to the survey is estimated.
Data collection
Frequency of data collection
Methods
Data compilation
The quality of the Finnish Tax Administration data are verified programmatically. The data are revised automatically by means of mass editing and imputing. Values missing from the data are primarily replaced with data for earlier years and secondarily with data on enterprises in the same category in terms of turnover and number of personnel. Errors and outliers are corrected logically by means of editing or by removing outliers. Minor turnover errors (less than five per cent) are scaled. Two different imputation methods are in use. Donor imputation is used when the enterprise is included in the statistical frame but no data are available in the material provided by the Finnish Tax Administration. In such cases, the data are obtained from enterprises of similar size operating in the same industry. The second method is used when no tax data on the enterprise can be obtained for the statistical year in question but the data for the previous year are available. In such cases, the data are imputed by using changes in turnover in the periodic tax data as weighting coefficient.
Own inquiry
Sample responses are processed manually with the business tax data for each enterprise separately, using the image archive of the Finnish Patent and Registration Office. Checking of the additional data on financial statements is guided by internal production application rules. Using approved data as a basis, industry-specific coefficients are calculated for turnover specifications and expenditure specifications. The coefficients are used to produce corresponding data for the entire group of enterprises. All enterprises in the random sample that have received only a small number of penalty points are approved en masse. Some of them are returned to manual checking.
Validation for the financial statement statistics on credit institutions, investment service
companies, life insurance companies and non-life insurance companies
Automatic and manual checks are made to the data, typically due to missing or abnormal observations. Such checks can be made, for example, by comparing reported data with published financial statements.
Data validation
Validation for the financial statement statistics on credit institutions, investment service
companies, life insurance companies and non-life insurance companies
Validation is carried out in connection with data collection and the compilation of primary statistics. The checks are typically related to missing or abnormal observations.
Principles and outlines
Contact organisation
Contact organisation unit
Legal acts and other agreements
Statistics Finland compiles statistics in line with the EU’s regulations applicable to statistics, which steer the statistical agencies of all EU Member States.
Further information: Statistical legislation
The data are published so that no individual enterprise’s data or development can be deduced from them. The compilation of the statistics is also guided by the following legislation:
- Act and Decree (1336/1997)
- Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics and Commission Implementing regulation (EU) 2020/1197.
- Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 on statistical units is applied to the statistics on business activities.
- Regulation on industrial classifications; Standard Industrial Classification 2008 is based on the European Union’s common industrial classification (NACE Rev. 2), which has been supplemented for national needs on the 5-digit level.
- In financial statistics for life insurance and non-life insurance conpanies the financial statement formula is based on the act of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health for the financial statement and consolidated financial statements of an insurance company (614/2008). The act is based on a directive for the financial statements and consolidated financial statements of the insurance companies (91/674/ETY). The data is directly collected by the Financial Supervisory Authority from all life insurance and non-life insurance companies operating in Finland. The obligation to provide data is based on the Statistics Act and the Act on the Financial Supervisory Authority.
- The financial statement formula used for credit institutions and investment service companies is based on the decree of the Ministry of Finance on the financial statements of credit institutions and investment service companies (Valtiovarainministeriön asetus luottolaitoksen ja sijoituspalveluyrityksen tilinpäätöksestä, konsernitilinpäätöksestä ja toimintakertomuksesta 76/2018) and the supplementary regulations of the Financial Supervisory Authority. The Financial Supervisory Authority collects data from all credit institutions and investment service companies operating in Finland, including from branches of credit institutions and foreign investment service companies in Finland. The obligation to provide data is based on the Statistics Act (280/2004, section 14), the Act on the Financial Supervisory Authority (878/2008, sections 18 and 60), as well as on the above decree of the Ministry of Finance.
Confidentiality - policy
Further information: Data protection | Statistics Finland (stat.fi)
Confidentiality - data treatment
Release policy
Further information: Publication principles for statistics at Statistics Finland
Data sharing
Accessibility and clarity
Statistical data are published as database tables in the StatFin database. The database is the primary publishing site of data, and new data are updated first there. When releasing statistical data, existing database tables can be updated with new data or completely new database tables can be published.
In addition to statistical data published in the StatFin database, a release on the key data is usually published in the web service. If the release contains data concerning several reference periods (e.g. monthly and annual data), a review bringing together these data is published in the web service. Database tables updated at the time of publication are listed both in the release and in the review. In some cases, statistical data can also be published as mere database releases in the StatFin database. No release or review is published in connection with these database releases.
Releases and database tables are published in three languages, in Finnish, Swedish and English. The language versions of releases may have more limited content than in Finnish.
Information about changes in the publication schedules of releases and database tables and about corrections are given as change releases in the web service.
Data revision - policy
The structural and financial statement statistics are not regularly revised. Data for years prior to the newest statistical year is updated as required in connection with the regular statistical releases. Notice of the updates is informed in the footnotes of the database tables.
Revisions – i.e. improvements in the accuracy of statistical data already published – are a normal feature of statistical production and result in improved quality of statistics. The principle is that statistical data are based on the best available data and information concerning the statistical phenomenon. On the other hand, the revisions are communicated as transparently as possible in advance. Advance communication ensures that the users can prepare for the data revisions.
The reason why data in statistical releases become revised is often caused by the data becoming supplemented. Then the new, revised statistical figure is based on a wider information basis and describes the phenomenon more accurately than before.
Revisions of statistical data may also be caused by the calculation method used, such as annual benchmarking or updating of weight structures. Changes of base years and used classifications may also cause revisions to data.
Quality assessment
Quality assurance
Quality management requires comprehensive guidance of activities. The quality management framework of the field of statistics is the European Statistics Code of Practice (CoP). The quality criteria of Official Statistics of Finland are compatible with the European Statistics Code of Practice.
Further information: Quality management | Statistics Finland (stat.fi)
User access
Further information: Publication principles for statistics
Unless otherwise separately stated in connection with the product, data or service concerned, Statistics Finland is the producer of the data and the owner of the copyright. The terms of use for statistical data.