The ombudsperson submits an activity report once a year. This contains an evaluation of the consumer concerns of the respective calendar year, for example the number of applications received or the reasons for complaints with which consumers have turned to the conciliation body.

Current activity report

In 2025 as a whole, 3,955 consumers turned to the SCHUFA ombudswoman with their concerns. This represents a significant increase of around 1,700 cases compared to the previous year.

Overall, the conciliation body recorded an increase of around 75% compared to 2024 (2,254 applications). This increase is related to the intensive media coverage of SCHUFA, in particular the decision of the Federal Court of Justice on the retention periods for completed negative entries and the new scoring procedure, which has been in force since March 17, 2026. In addition, texts can now be formulated much more quickly and easily thanks to the spread of apps that use artificial intelligence. The use of such tools was also observed at the conciliation body.

An application for conciliation is only admissible if the applicant has first contacted the Consumer Service at the SCHUFA Private Customer Service Center with their concerns. Only if existing disagreements with the applicant could not be resolved there, no complaint was filed and no other conciliation body has already dealt with the matter, will the proceedings be conducted before the ombudswoman. In 2025, almost 80% of the applications submitted were inadmissible as this requirement was not met. The number of admissible applications rose from 751 to 843 cases compared to the previous year. The arbitration board initially forwarded inadmissible submissions to the SCHUFA consumer service.

In the arbitration year 2025, the request was justified in 54 cases. This means that the ombudswoman's examination revealed that the incorrect storage in the sender's database was the responsibility of SCHUFA or a contractual partner of SCHUFA.

Overall, it can be said that against the background of the more than 350,000 reports SCHUFA provides to its contractual partners every day, the number of justified concerns is extremely low.

In addition, the conciliation body responded to consumer concerns in 379 individual cases last year as a gesture of goodwill and without acknowledging any legal obligation.

As in previous years, more than 70 percent of admissible applications (612 cases) concerned the premature deletion of one or more negative entries.

The second most common reason for complaint was concerns about scoring (104 cases). In these cases, the conciliation body provided the applicants with comprehensive information about the basis and functioning of the score calculation.

Most of the applicants who approached the ombudswoman with an admissible request in 2025 were between 18 and 40 years old.

Looking at the submissions to the ombudswoman from a demographic perspective, the following picture emerges:

At 609, the vast majority of admissible applications were submitted by men. 230 applications came from women.

Most of the applicants were between 18 and 40 years old.

Most applications came from people from North Rhine-Westphalia, followed by Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Relatively few applications came from the new federal states.