As of: February 15, 2024, 5:06 a.m
By: Christoph Gschoßmann
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Rental agreements, loans or subscriptions: Credit rating companies like Schufa often decide what consumers are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do.
Now there are new rules.
Kassel – A good Schufa score has opened many doors for German citizens.
But consumers are often in the dark about how exactly credit rating companies come to their conclusion and which criteria play a role.
The European Court of Justice found checking the creditworthiness of consumers in its current form a thorn in the side.
After a ruling, the Federal Republic is now also following suit.
The Federal Data Protection Act is being reformed and consumer rights are being strengthened.
Two cases from Germany lead to new laws in Europe
The highest European court had ruled that checking consumers' creditworthiness was only permitted within narrow limits.
The data that, according to the draft, may not be used in the future so that companies can assess a person's ability and willingness to pay includes, among other things, the home address, name or personal data from the use of social networks.
Information about incoming and outgoing payments to and from bank accounts is also taboo.
A Schufa form. © Christian Ohde/Imago
The impetus for the change originally came from two cases in Germany.
In one case, a woman sued who had been denied a loan.
She asked Schufa to delete an entry and grant access to the data.
Schufa then only provided the score value and general information about the calculation, but not the exact calculation method.
The Schufa score also often plays a role in assessing the solvency of prospective tenants.
How does Schufa get its score?
This can be understood in the future
In the future, we should be able to find out exactly how credit rating companies come to their conclusions.
“In the future, consumers will have to find out straight away which data and categories of data affected their score, how they were weighted and what significance the score has,” said Steffi Lemke (Greens), Federal Minister for the Environment and Consumer protection.
Possible discrimination through scoring is now being put a stop to.
The planned law, which still has to pass the Bundestag and Bundesrat, will exclude the possibility that the postal code determines solvency.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) also said that the draft clearly stipulates that data on ethnic origin and health data may not be included in the automated calculation of solvency.
The reform of the Federal Data Protection Act is also intended to make research projects easier.
In the future, according to the Ministry of the Interior, companies and institutions that process data for historical, scientific or statistical purposes will only have to contact one supervisory authority as a contact person for cross-border projects for which there is a shared responsibility under data protection law.
(cgsc with dpa)