File Photo Lehtikuva.
A number of companies offering instant loans have been observed to charge illegally high interest rates, according to the Turun Sanomat, a Finnish-language newspaper.
The newspaper compared the annual interest rates charged by the firms to the legal interest ceiling of 50.5 per cent.
The survey reveals that the interest ceiling was exceeded by a few percentage points and in extreme cases by hundreds of thousands.
The Ministry of Justice told the newspaper that clients ought not to pay above the annual interest rate of 50.5 per cent. Such interest rates and other fee collections are against the law.
The consumer ombudsman in charge of supervising the instant loan companies is also aware of the situation. A marketing ban is currently sought for one such company.
