We work to ensure that people can do business conveniently and quickly and that companies can trust them - without knowing them personally. In doing so, we reduce the risk of non-payment for providers of loans, goods and services, which makes it possible to do more business on good terms. This is how we promote growth and prosperity in Germany.

With our solutions, we support business transactions from identification and credit rating calculation to fraud prevention and regulatory compliance. We make an important contribution to the prevention of money laundering and help to limit the resulting economic damage.

The idea of founding SCHUFA in 1927 originally came from an employee of the Berlin electricity company: as their electricity meter readers had a good overview of who paid their electricity bills regularly and punctually and who did not, he had the idea of selling electrical appliances such as refrigerators to "good payers" by installment. They knew that they would meet their payment obligations. This meant that significantly more people were able to use modern electrical appliances.

The principle of facilitating credit transactions on the basis of existing payment histories also aroused the interest of other companies. As a result, the "Schutzgemeinschaft für allgemeine Kreditsicherung" - SCHUFA for short - was founded, where companies can report and request information on their customers' payment history.

SCHUFA's actions are based on a common interest of all participating companies: mutual protection against payment defaults on the basis of current and meaningful data.

Companies need a reliable risk assessment for credit transactions. Thanks to the principle of reciprocity, SCHUFA can provide this information. SCHUFA provides the platform for recording and storing the payment experiences of participating companies - the so-called contractual partners of SCHUFA - and exchanging them within the contractual partner network. SCHUFA uses this database for credit scoring and identity checks. This information is an important decision-making basis for companies and helps them to minimize payment defaults in both private and corporate customer business.

As Germany's leading provider of credit and information services for consumers and companies, SCHUFA has information on 6.6 million companies and 69 million natural persons. We issue an average of 350,000 reports to companies every day , thus supporting fast and uncomplicated business transactions.

We have only stored positive information on more than 90 percent of people. Our work has had a stabilizing effect on the lending business in Germany: the rate of smoothly repaid consumer loans is 98.1%.