The stability and reliability of the financial sector are critical for the functioning of society. A stable and reliable financial sector is also at the heart of our supervisory work. With technology, geopolitical tensions and economic volatility impacting the financial sector every day, trust comes from strong solvency and the ability to anticipate and withstand unexpected situations.

Finland’s financial sector is strong and solvent. Capital and liquidity levels and the banking sector’s low level of non-performing loans support sustainability. Uncertainty remains high, however, particularly due to geopolitical risks. Although extreme chains of events are unlikely, ensuring the operational security and resilience of society requires that the financial sector is prepared and functions even in exceptional situations.

Savings and investment union will also affect Finnish capital market

In December 2025, the European Commission made a proposal for a savings and investment union. When implemented, the proposal will improve the competitiveness of the European capital markets globally. Strong European capital markets also benefit Finnish companies and investors.

The proposal will also harmonise the functioning and supervision of capital markets across Europe. Part of the supervision would be centralised in the European supervisor ESMA (European Securities and Market Authority), with whom we currently cooperate in capital market supervision. Centralising supervision would strengthen the consistency of supervision and also expertise in specific issues, thereby enhancing supervision. The opportunities for Finnish investors and companies to obtain investment and financing from the capital markets would improve.

The development of the savings and investment union is in many respects reminiscent of the development of the banking union a little over ten years ago. The banking union has proved to be an effective solution for the supervision of the single European banking sector. A similar development will hopefully take place in the capital markets sector.

Increasing equity weight in pension insurance must be considered in risk management

In its programme, the Government stated that pension reform must ensure the financial sustainability of pension security and safeguard an adequate level of benefits. This is aimed at strengthening public finances. 

Regulations will be changed to allow employee pension institutions to seek better returns by investing pension assets in a risker manner, i.e. by increasing the equity weight of investments. The Finnish Centre for Pensions has estimated that the reform could increase the proportion of shares in investment portfolios by more than ten percentage points. In addition, regulatory changes will introduce the possibility to use debt leverage in all real estate investments of pension company subsidiaries.

The Financial Supervisory Authority (FIN-FSA) always monitors solvency in line with the requirements of current regulations. It should be noted, however, that increasing investment risk increases the volatility of returns; while returns may be better in good times, investments can also perform poorly. Our task is to continue to ensure that the solvency of employee pension insurers remains at the level required by regulations.

Consequently, in the FIN-FSA’s view, the investment and risk management expertise of pension institutions’ boards has an important role to play. With diversification, the liquidity of employee pension institutions should also be taken into account more explicitly than at present, so that institutions have sufficient liquid investment assets to safeguard liquidity.

Digital service efficiency and fraud prevention must be in balance

In recent years, various banking and investment scams have become more common. Last year, the FIN-FSA published recommendations aimed at improving the security of online and mobile banking and online payments in Finland.

We consider it important that banks enable and, if necessary, set security limits for normal credit transfers payments in addition to instant payments. We also recommend that banks, in real-time fraud monitoring, make more effective use of customer behaviour-based factors, such as previous payment history, anomalous transaction times or payer location. This type of analysis helps banks identify anomalous payment transactions and respond quickly before harm arises.

Scammers often try to hijack, for example, authentication applications: it would therefore be beneficial for banks to set a delay or other security control when a new authentication application is installed and to request additional confirmation for payments when a bank’s monitoring suspects a fraudulent payment.

Financial sector entities have done a lot of good work reminding people to be vigilant and teaching them to recognise scams, and this work is of prime importance. As scams have increased and evolved, including through artificial intelligence, it is essential that banks continue to do their part to make fraud even more difficult.

It is important that digital services are seamless for customers, but this should not be done at the expense of payment security or customer due diligence obligations. Good customer due diligence practices ensure that money laundering and terrorist financing are prevented, which is important for our society as a whole. Even in these cases, however, entities are required to provide solutions that do not unduly impede the customer’s transactions. Categorical exclusion (de-risking) of risky customers or activities, instead of developing monitoring solutions, is not permitted.

Digital operational security increasingly important across the financial sector

Global uncertainty, geopolitical tensions and rapid technological development increase the importance of operational security. This is also addressed by European regulations, such as DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act), which began to be applied in 2025. European banking, insurance and capital market supervisors, together with national supervisors, will focus in 2026 on ensuring a supervisory framework for critical ICT actors. In Finland, we conducted a stress test for the banking, insurance and capital market sectors to measure the ability of supervised entities to respond to and recover from a cyber attack. We provided feedback on the test to supervised entities and are monitoring actions taken on the basis of it.

The EU Artificial Intelligence Act has also brought changes to financial sector entities and their supervision. Based on our assessment, companies operating in the financial sector are utilising artificial intelligence to improve their operations. We supervise and monitor that this takes place in accordance with regulations and without compromising customer and investor protection.

Towards more effective and active supervision

In the spirit of our renewed strategy, which came into force at the beginning of 2026, we are moving towards more effective and active supervision. In 2026, our supervision will focus particularly on the operational security of digital services and preparedness for extreme economic and market phenomena. In addition to the annual priorities, there will be continuous surveillance of solvency, good governance and codes of conduct. 

We seek supervisory effectiveness through risk-based prioritisation whereby we specifically focus supervision on where it has the greatest impact. We cannot supervise everything all the time, but we react and target supervision when we observe that a certain area’s significance and risks are increasing or that in some area there are significant shortcomings that require supervisory action.

Recently, consideration has been given to expanding the statutory role of the FIN-FSA to support competitiveness. The current operational objective defined in the Act on the Financial Supervisory Authority is to ensure the balanced operation of credit, insurance and pension institutions and other regulated supervised entities, as required by the stability of financial markets, and to safeguard the interests of the insured and maintain public confidence in the functioning of financial markets.

The balanced operation of supervised entities, which is a prerequisite for financial market stability, is in itself conducive to promoting competitiveness: financial market stability is a prerequisite for sustainable growth and prosperity. There are far too many examples in economic history of what happens to growth and prosperity when financial stability is undermined.

The FIN-FSA has been at the forefront, together with other Nordic supervisory authorities, in promoting simplification of regulation, reporting and supervision at the EU level. Regulatory simplification will continue in the coming years, both in the EU and in Finland. An increasingly risk-based approach to supervision is also likely to improve the efficient functioning of the market.

Our experts and supervisors implement our strategy in their daily work. We need the ability to prioritise and boldly focus on what will create effectiveness in supervision. That’s why the cornerstone of the strategy is expertise-supported management. We supervise as a united FIN-FSA.

I would like to thank our staff for the cooperation and professionalism that once again enabled us to deliver effective supervision in 2025. Together, we ensure financial stability and confidence in the financial markets and enhance the protection of customers and investors – every day, in all circumstances

Helsinki, 6 March 2026  

Tero Kurenmaa