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SCHUFA and creditworthiness: What the score means

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tagsglossar, geld, verbraucher, datenschutz

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SCHUFA and creditworthiness: What the score means

In short: Credit agencies such as SCHUFA collect data on payment behaviour and calculate a value from it that shows how reliably someone is likely to pay bills and loans.

In more detail: Creditworthiness means the ability to obtain credit. Banks, landlords, mobile providers and online shops ask a credit agency before concluding contracts on invoice or in instalments. In Germany SCHUFA is the best known; there are also Creditreform, infoscore (Experian) and others.

In Depth

What is stored

  • Current accounts and credit cards (that they exist), loans and leasing contracts, mobile contracts.
  • Negative entries: unpaid claims after reminders, insolvency, sworn statement of assets. Not stored are account balance, income, occupation, religion or rent paid. Positive entries (a loan paid on time) count towards the score.

The score

The score is a number (for example in percent or points) calculated from characteristics and statistical comparison groups. The exact calculation is a trade secret. Many requests in a short time for loans can lower the value. An enquiry for conditions (“conditions enquiry”), by contrast, has no effect.

Your rights

You are entitled to a free copy of your data (Art. 15 GDPR) from SCHUFA and other credit agencies, once a year as a simple “data copy under Art. 15”. You can have wrong entries corrected or deleted. Settled payment disruptions are generally deleted three years after settlement; the exact periods are in the industry’s codes of conduct and can be shorter in individual cases. Whoever wants to avoid a negative entry should take reminders seriously and dispute claims if they are wrong.

Tips

  • Pay bills on time, do not ignore reminders.
  • Do not take out many accounts or loans without need.
  • Keep addresses up to date when moving.
  • Beware of warnings about “SCHUFA-free loans”: they are often very expensive or dubious.
  • Check your information before looking for a flat. For minors and apprentices usually little is stored yet; that is no disadvantage.

See also: Data subject rights under the GDPR, GDPR data export, Default interest and reminders, Overdraft

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