Bisnode Finland Oy – Complaint Upheld (Finland, 2021)

Controller is Bisnode Finland Oy, a company that keeps a credit information register. This register gives an overview of the creditworthiness of debtors, whose debts are shown in the register. Bisnode Finland Oy receives information from the Legal Register Centre regarding court cases in which a debtor challenges a payment obligation. Because the Courts and the Legal Register Centre made errors between 2011 and 2017, this information, turned out to be inaccurate and transferred without a legal basis, because it did not fulfil the obligations of Article 6(1) of the (Finnish) Credit Information Act. Since the controller relied on the information provided by the Legal Register Centre, they also registered inaccurate personal data without a legal basis. A data subject who was registered in controller's credit register because of three cases, requested the DPA to order controller to delete their personal data from the controller’s credit information register, because it was processed without a legal basis and the controller did not provide clear criteria on which they determined the debtor's creditworthiness. The controller, however, argued that they carefully assessed each outcome of court cases to determine the creditworthiness of the debtor, that they had a legal basis to process this information (Article 6(1) Credit Information Act), and that they could not establish fixed criteria of this assessment, since this is “to some extend a matter of human reasoning and consideration” and must therefore be done on a case-by-case basis. First, the DPA noted that, although the issues occurred between 2011 and 2017, the issues had continued since the GDPR entered into force, and therefore, the GDPR applied to this case. Second, the DPA stated that that in each of the three instances, the entries should not have been registered, because these conditions laid down in Article 6(1) Credit Information Act, had not been fulfilled. Hence, the DPA concluded that there was no legal