In Finland, municipalities are responsible for providing many statutory services to their residents. Finland has 309 municipalities of varying size, ranging from the 682 residents in Lestijärvi to the over 660,000 in Helsinki, the capital of Finland – and everything in between.
Municipalities may provide some of the statutory services through corporate entities under their control for reasons such as fair market competition or municipal cost discipline. Municipalities may also establish joint municipal authorities to share costs and produce services such as waste management together.
MuniFin finances municipalities, joint municipal authorities and corporate entities under their control. All our customer financing carries 0% risk weight. Read more about our guarantees below.
The key statutory responsibilities of municipalities include the following:
- Education and early childhood education
- Youth, library and sports services
- Land use and planning
- Water and waste management, road construction and maintenance
- Building supervision
- Transportation and public transport
- Environmental services
- Safety and preparedness
- Economic policy, including employment services (starting from 1 Jan 2025)
- Organisation of elections and promotion of residents’ opportunities to participate
Our services
MuniFin offers municipalities financing, lease financing and advisory services. We also offer Finnish municipalities green finance for projects that are friendly for the climate and environment and social finance for projects that produce widespread social benefits. These products are financed through our green and social bonds.
MuniFin’s digital services are widely used in the municipal sector. Most of Finland’s 100 largest municipalities manage their financing portfolio in our loan portfolio application. The loan portfolio application is used by a total of 260 customers who manage over EUR 55 billion’s worth of loans. We also have an ESG application that allows our municipal sector customers to monitor their ESG indicators and compare them to those of other municipalities.