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Matters concerning evaluation of the creditworthiness of consumers have returned to the focus during the last year. Discussions revolve around consumers’ increased loan burden and share of loans in default; there is lobbying for additional support from the establishment of a positive credit registry, and the Financial Inspectorate has started getting tougher with fines on market participants who don’t abide by the rules.

The main goal of the channel is to give employees a possibility of confidentially reporting violations. Employees must have a way of doing so orally, in writing or both. It is considered important to consider the nature of the company and its workforce.

Those operating in the financial sector are bound by various laws along with requirements for internal audit arising from those laws. In addition, the Auditors Activities Act governs the provision of internal audit service, defining who is allowed to be engaged in the professional activities of an internal auditor.

Pursuant to amendments that entered into force last year, the Commercial Register can fine or compulsorily dissolve those who are late filing an annual report. Compulsory dissolution can be done if the company lacks registered assets (i.e. no assets evident in the land register, ship register, Commercial Register or Estonian securities register), is not a party to any current judicial proceedings, criminal enforcement proceedings or tax disputes.

Anyone who has to consider any aspect of cybersecurity at their company has probably heard the sonorous sounding terms NIS 2, DORA, E-ITS or even ISO 27001.

E-invoices celebrate their first minor anniversary – submitting invoices to the public sector in this format has been obligatory for five years, while technical support for e-invoicing has existed on the market for more than 10 years. But the hope that the private sector would organically embrace the state’s role model has not come to fruition.

The rules on the contact person underwent a facelift as part of company law reform, the majority of the amendments of which came into force on 1 February 2023.

Last year, an amendment to the Commercial Register Act was passed, which meant more fines for companies for the purpose of making the Estonian business environment more transparent.

In their work, internal auditors often come across a situation where clients want to have an internal audit done in their organization, but since they have no previous contact with an internal audit service, they have a number of questions.

A high-quality accountant who uses modern technological solutions – up to and including AI – can do more for a company than ever before. An accountant can be closer to a CFO’s skillsets than a data entry role.

Grant Thornton Baltic provided consultation to OptiPRO OÜ, which operates a retail chain of optometry stores under the brand Pro Optika and acquired the holding company of the Pere Optika chain, Optiland Eesti OÜ. After receiving a merger permit from the Competition Authority, the transaction was completed on June 10, 2024, and OptiPRO OÜ acquired a stake in Optiland Eesti OÜ.

Where to start if your company doesn’t have a human resources director and HR policy, and on top of it, has a negative employer net promoter score? Grant Thornton Baltic’s HR director Marge Litvinova and recruiter Kätlin Treima share some valuable experience.

On 16 April 2024, Parliament adopted legislation allowing those on sick leave for extended periods to continue working under adapted conditions.

Business operators are hard-pressed to find an auditor to go over their annual report, since there are fewer and fewer auditors every year, but the amount of work just keeps on growing. The worsening quality of the work done by auditing companies is also a concern.

Transfer pricing is often talked about solely in a tax accounting context but actually determining transfer price requires the existence of a strategically good budgetary and cost accounting system in managerial reporting. If a company has designed a detailed, adequate cost accounting system, a key precondition for shaping transfer prices has been met, especially when it comes to transactions related to goods and services where a clear cost base is even more important than mark-up.

All of us have a work life and a private life, and no matter how we try, it is hard to keep them completely separate. Problems at work come home with us and vice versa. That is the underpinning for my belief that an employer who genuinely cares about its people will see investing into maintaining mental health as an investment in its employees.