Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System

The Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System comprises a distributed data retrieval system for obtaining information on bank and payment accounts, as well as the Bank and Payment Accounts Register and an aggregating application.

Customs is the controller of the Bank and Payment Accounts Register who maintains it, and is responsible for submitting the information stored in the Register to the competent authorities. The purpose of the Bank and Payment Accounts Register is to receive and store the data referred to in the Act on the Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System and to disclose data stored in the Register. Data for the Bank and Payment Accounts Register are provided by payment institutions, electronic money institutions, providers of crypto-assets and credit institutions that have been granted an exemption by the Financial Supervisory Authority.

The aggregating application is an automated technical solution maintained by Customs which conveys information requests by competent authorities for example to the Bank and Payment Accounts Register, and transmits the data received from it in accordance with requests to the competent authorities.

Credit institutions must maintain an electronic information retrieval system for bank accounts and payment accounts (Act on the Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System (571/2019), section 4 (in Finnish)). Through the Monitoring System, credit institutions submit information to the aggregating application maintained by Customs. Customs then conveys the information to the legally prescribed competent authorities such as the Police and the Tax Administration.

The Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System can be used by the Police, the Financial Intelligence Unit, Customs, the Border Guard, the Tax Administration, the National Enforcement Authority, the Defence Forces, the Financial Supervisory Authority, the Patent and Registration Office, the Regional State Administrative Agencies, the Gambling Administration of the National Police Board and bar associations.

Competent authorities can make enquiries to the Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System and request only information prescribed in the law with regard to customer details on private persons and businesses. Each authority operates based on legally prescribed principles as to the tasks that the obtained information can be used for. Separate legislation on each party utilising information provides for information acquisition rights.

Subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, Customs is responsible for the implementation of the Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System. Customs maintains the Bank and Payment Accounts Register and the aggregating application. Moreover, Customs has given instructions for technical implementation to data retrieval system operators, as well as operators who store data in the Register. Customs is the register controller with regard to the Register and the aggregating application (as concerns personal information).

Customs is also the competent authority provided for in the Act on the Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System.

You can read more about the processing of personal data in the Bank and Payment Accounts Register and in the aggregating application in the Finnish Customs privacy statement.

To provide the bank and payment account details of their customers, financial operators, i.e. data suppliers, must either join the Bank and Payment Accounts Register or establish their own data retrieval systems. Both ways require preparations by operators, and data suppliers need to contact Customs for detailed instructions.

Payment institutions, electric money institutions and providers of crypto-assets must join the Bank and Payment Accounts Register in order to store data in accordance with sections 5 and 6 of the Act on the Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System (in Finnish). As an alternative, operators can also create data retrieval systems.

Credit institutions are required to maintain data retrieval systems for releasing information (Act on the Bank and Payment Accounts Monitoring System, section 4 (in Finnish)). Credit institutions can ask the Financial Supervisory Authority for an exemption from the obligation to maintain such a system. In practice, this means joining the Bank and Payment Accounts Register.