Finland CPD: 120 Hours That Are Not in Finnish Law

Finland requires auditors to complete 120 hours of continuing education over three years, 60 of them verifiable, with at least 20 a year. Those figures are real and they are enforced. But they are not in Finnish law.

They are not in the Auditing Act, and they are not in a ministry decree. They sit in a guideline issued by the regulator — which matters more than it sounds, and is the reason this page exists.

Where the numbers actually live

The instrument is a guideline of the Finnish Patent and Registration Office, acting through its Auditor Oversight function, in force from 1 July 2025 and first applied to supervisory data submitted in 2026. It replaced a guideline that had been in force since 1 July 2017.

The regulator cites the Auditing Act as its basis — the duty to maintain and develop professional competence, the supervision power, and the approval requirements — together with the separate act governing public-sector auditors. No ministry decree is cited anywhere.

So if you see the Finnish figures attributed to a decree, that attribution is not supported by the regulator’s own page. And the accurate formulation is not “Finnish law requires 120 hours” but “the Finnish audit regulator’s guideline requires 120 hours, under a statutory duty to maintain competence that states no figure.”

That is the same architecture as Germany, where the statute is a single sentence with no number and a chamber by-law supplies the figure, and as Sweden, where the act contains no continuing-education provision at all and the number arrives three delegations down. Finland just takes it one step further: the number is in guidance rather than in any binding instrument we could identify.

The requirements

• 120 hours over a three-year assessment period, using a rolling window of the three most recent reporting years
• 60 of the 120 must be verifiable
• At least 20 hours per year
• Reporting period 1 July to 30 June — not the calendar year
• Reporting is annual and electronic, through the regulator’s own service
• Retention: six years — covering the current and the preceding three-year assessment periods

That July-to-June reporting period is the detail most likely to cause a problem for anyone assuming a calendar year. Finland joins Spain, which runs October to September, and Hong Kong, which runs December to November, in not using the calendar — our guide to when your CPD cycle actually starts sets out how many different anchoring methods are in use.

One thing we are not going to tell you: the annual reporting deadline date. Neither the current guideline nor its predecessor states one. They say reporting is annual and electronic, and that the period runs 1 July to 30 June. We are not inventing a date to fill the gap — check the regulator’s service.

Subject areas, and no ethics quota

The guideline defines subject areas with no per-subject hour minimums:

• audit and assurance engagements
• bookkeeping, accounting and company law
• taxation
• plus public-sector legislation for public-sector auditors
• plus sustainability matters for auditors registered for sustainability reporting assurance

Ethics appears only as an example topic within the first area. There is no standalone ethics minimum. That is consistent with almost every European regime we have examined — Romania is the sole exception, at two structured hours a year.

The sustainability route, and a 2027 deadline

A separate guideline governs registration as a sustainability reporting assurance provider, and it carries a hard cut-off worth diarising.

• At least 30 hours of study on sustainability reporting and its assurance. It must be verifiable — a participation certificate, for instance — and may be delivered by one or more organisations, including universities
• Applications have been open since 1 January 2024
• Applications must be made by 31 December 2027

The transitional eligibility conditions are narrow. The route is open to someone approved as an auditor before 1 January 2024, or whose approval process began before that date with approval following by 31 December 2025. Holders of the relevant examination permit as at the end of 2023, or who passed that examination before 1 January 2024, had to be approved as an auditor before 1 January 2026.

Anyone outside the transitional provision must sit the separate sustainability examination. So the 30-hour route is a closing door, not a standing option.

Compare the spread across this group: Belgium requires 60 ESG hours by 31 December 2026, Denmark 30 hours counting toward its general requirement, Sweden an extra 40 verifiable hours over five years, and Finland 30 hours as a one-off registration condition with a 2027 application cut-off. Four countries, four completely different designs.

What did and did not change in 2025

Worth being precise about, because a new guideline invites the assumption that the numbers moved.

They did not. The 120 hours, the 60 verifiable, the 20 a year, the 1 July to 30 June period and the six-year retention are identical in the 2017 and 2025 guidelines. The visible new element is the sustainability subject area and the application to 2026 reporting data.

We could not obtain a formal change-list, and the superseded guideline carries no “replaced” notice, so we are stating what is the same rather than claiming to know everything that differs.

Two gaps we are naming rather than filling

We have not read the Finnish Auditing Act. The national legal database served navigation shells on every route we tried, and the one document a search surfaced turned out to be an entirely different statute. The section references above are the regulator’s own citations of the Act, not our reading of it. That is a meaningful limit on a page whose whole argument is about where the obligation sits in the hierarchy.

We cannot tell you what the professional association requires. Its website redirects to a member login throughout, so we could not establish its official English name, its description of itself, or whether it imposes any CPD obligation on members separate from the regulator’s. Report that as unknown, not as none. The Swedish case is the warning: there the professional body’s rule is materially stricter than the regulator’s, and a reader who checked only the regulator would be under-compliant.

We also did not research the Finnish general accounting profession, so nothing here speaks to it.

Frequently asked questions

How many CPD hours do Finnish auditors need? 120 over a rolling three-year assessment period, of which 60 verifiable, with at least 20 a year.

Is that a legal requirement? The duty to maintain competence is statutory, but it states no figure. The 120/60/20 numbers come from the audit regulator’s guideline.

When does the year run? 1 July to 30 June, not the calendar year.

How long must records be kept? Six years — the current plus the preceding three-year assessment periods.

What about sustainability assurance? At least 30 verifiable hours of study, under a transitional registration route whose applications must be made by 31 December 2027. Outside the transitional provision, an examination is required.

Verifiable hours on a July-to-June clock, with Learnsignal

Half of Finland’s requirement must be verifiable, and the reporting period does not line up with the calendar. Our certificated courses record activity, date, duration and subject so hours land provably in the right window. For the wider picture, see why European CPD keeps converging on 120 hours and how Norway splits its two professions. The guidelines cited here are published by PRH.