Case study from August 2015
Valid and selective creditworthiness data plays a central role in loss prevention through active risk management. The credit insurer Coface obtains company data from SCHUFA, among others, and benefits from this especially in the SME segment. By cooperating with SCHUFA, Coface has been able to reduce costs and achieve an increase in quality within a short period of time. A solid basis for helping its own contractual partners to assess commercial risks and protect them against payment defaults.
The challenge
For Coface as an international credit insurer, making your customers aware of risks and protecting them against defaults is part of everyday life. This requires active risk management, which is naturally based on credit-relevant data such as payment experience and forecasts. Coface collects its own data and also uses other sources of information.
In the area of small businesses and freelancers, the German Coface branch wanted to improve even further and therefore decided to connect another information supplier. The declared aim was to optimize the quality of new customer checks in the SME segment in particular.
After extensive testing, SCHUFA Holding AG was chosen. As a leading information and service partner for the lending industry, SCHUFA not only has credit-relevant information on natural persons, but also extensive company data, e.g. information from public directories such as the commercial register and the electronic Federal Gazette, as well as information on debt collection procedures. The company database includes information on 1.7 million companies from the commercial register and 3.5 million non-HR companies, i.e. small businesses such as pharmacists, web designers or bakers, as well as freelancers such as architects and lawyers.
The information on small businesses and freelancers is based on many years of experience as well as current data from public directories and information from SCHUFA contractual partners who register them in accordance with the principle of reciprocity. Through extensive analyses of this database, SCHUFA provides valid forecast figures on payment behavior.
Coface now also relies on credit rating information from SCHUFA when making credit decisions. Through the connection with modern and flexible product interfaces, the company has optimized its internal processes.
The cooperation with SCHUFA will save around 100,000 manual processing operations per year. Another advantage: in addition to a reduction in the costs of obtaining information, these can now also be reliably calculated.
In addition, Coface learns promptly about insolvencies, other entries in the debtor register, a change of owner or shareholder, collection procedures, mergers, liquidations, dissolutions or changes of address and name within the scope of subsequent or change notifications.
Reliable basis for decision-making
Significant cost reduction
Time savings through optimized processes
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