Acting sustainable

As a credit agency, we hold data on 67.9 million natural persons and 6 million companies. We obtain data on natural persons from our contractual partners and from public directories, such as those of credit institutions, insurance companies and mail-order companies, and process it for our corporate and private customers. In this way, we provide reliable creditworthiness information and make an important contribution to building trust between two business partners. We are aware that this means we bear a great responsibility.

The protection and quality assurance of the data entrusted to us is therefore our top priority. SCHUFA stores all this data exclusively on servers in Germany in accordance with very high security standards and the strictest guidelines. Their processing is carried out in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (DS-GVO). In addition, we are in regular consultation with the data protection officer of the State of Hesse. Only high data quality ensures reliable credit reports and creates trust. We are therefore committed to maintaining our quality standards at a consistently high level. To this end, we conduct data analyses and inventories, such as quarterly checks of scores.

To constantly increase customer satisfaction, we continuously adapt our products to the changing usage needs of our customers, thus ensuring smooth and fast communication. In the event of differences between consumers and our company, we have set up the SCHUFA Ombudsmann the first credit agency in Germany to provide an independent mediation service. For exchanges on consumer issues and social topics, SCHUFA has established an independent advisory board as a neutral body: the SCHUFA Consumer Advisory Board, which is made up of academics, journalists, debt advisors and business representatives.

As an employer, we aim to be a trustworthy and secure partner for our employees. The basis for this is a corporate culture characterized by appreciation, collegiality and equality across all hierarchical levels. Regardless of age, gender, origin, sexual orientation and physical constitution, all our employees have the same opportunities.

We value the commitment of our employees, which is why they receive attractive basic compensation, fringe benefits, company pension plans and other voluntary benefits.

We also promote the professional and personal development of our employees. Development, feedback and target discussions are an integral part of our personnel development program, as are individual promotion and development programs.

When it comes to health in the workplace, we rely on a range of effective measures from our occupational health management system that contribute to a stress-reduced working environment and a stable health rate.

With the help of flexible working hours, parent-child offices and crèche places, we support the best possible balance between work and family life.

Our business as a service company is not without impact on the environment: We require energy and water at our sites as well as paper for our information, internal use and marketing materials.

With the aim of continuously reducing the environmental impact of our business activities, we introduced an environmental management system in 2005. We manage this using a transparent system of key performance indicators. Since 2005, SCHUFA has participated in the "Ökoprofit" initiative of the City of Wiesbaden. The flexible environmental consulting program helps us to combine environmental relief and cost reduction. At the same time, the cooperation project between the city and companies is a local network for sustainable business, to which we contribute with our energy-saving measures.

Our central position in an increasingly digital credit and consumer economy goes hand in hand with a great responsibility. In the spirit of corporate digital responsibility (CDR), we have therefore formulated principles according to which we act and on the basis of which we want to contribute to the digital debate:

Reliability and verifiability: The processes we use are reliable and are permanently reviewed by our experts.

Transparency and traceability: We regularly have our processes scientifically reviewed and disclose them to the supervisory authorities. We make our actions comprehensible to consumers and explain the general principles of scoring to them.

Participation and empowerment: We have set ourselves the goal of enabling as many people as possible to participate in economic life and promoting independent action. In doing so, we aim to avoid unlawful discrimination and use credit-relevant information to forecast the probability of repayment.

Social commitment has had a firm place at SCHUFA for many years and has been continuously expanded in recent years. In line with our core business, our activities focus on nationwide financial education projects and the topics of information and data protection. With the WirtschaftsWerkstatt, we promote financial literacy among young people. The aim is to raise young people's awareness of consumer behavior, loans, contracts and data protection, and to help prevent debt.

Through the SCHUFA macht Schule program, we provide teachers with teaching materials on general financial education and financial literacy free of charge.

Once a year, our employees pitch in and get involved in local social projects as part of our Corporate Volunteering Days. Since 2012, we have been involved regionally as WiesPate for children and young people with an immigrant background.

We regularly open our corporate art collection FARBRAUMWELTEN at our headquarters in Wiesbaden to the public and promote young people's interest in and accessibility to modern art.

SCHUFA is also part of the CSR Regio.Net Wiesbaden network. The participating companies stand up for more responsible corporate governance in the region.