The case
Ms. P. informs the SCHUFA ombudsperson that she was told during a financing discussion at her bank that her basic score was too low for a loan to be granted. Her own review of her score had actually resulted in a drop in the value from 93.6% to 85%. As she was not aware of any fault and could not explain this development, she had contacted SCHUFA with a request for an explanation and correction of the value. However, the score subsequently deteriorated to 75.69%. Ms. P. argues that she has no negative features in her database and that she meets all her debts on time. She had also not entered into any new liabilities. An acquaintance who works at a bank told her that the basic score is used for every financing transaction and that only this is important.
The decision
After reviewing all the documents available to her, the SCHUFA ombudsperson informed Ms. P. that scoring is used to create a forecast of future events based on information collected and past experience. The basic score is used exclusively for personal information and is not passed on to companies. This means that SCHUFA's contractual partners have no access to this value. Industry scores, on the other hand, can be requested by banks and companies and can be calculated very differently depending on the industry. The score value is based on the data stored about a person. Consumers can view this data in their customer portal