Schufa buckles: Debtors can be happy

If you have debts in Germany, you can safely assume that the Schufa knows about it. With a bad Schufa rating, it often becomes difficult to conclude contracts, finance a car or pay for larger purchases in installments. For 250,000 Germans, this dependency is over – and it shouldn’t stay that way.

Schufa really does it: 250,000 debtor entries disappear

Schufa lets the facts speak for themselves: In the course of an ongoing court case, the credit agency says it has around 250,000 consumers deleted the entries on personal bankruptcy. “For most of the 250,000 consumers the creditworthiness improves due to the shortening of the storage period”explains Ole Schröder, board member at Schufa (source: Mirror).

The Schufa had previously announced that it would drastically reduce the storage period for entries from private bankruptcies. In the future, the corresponding entries should be made after the debtors have been discharged from their residual debt stored for only six months become. So far, the Schufa had kept such information for up to three years.

You can get an idea of ​​how your Schufa score is with the Schufa scoring test:

But because of that Affected persons can suffer considerable disadvantages. Because the insolvency courts only publish information on personal bankruptcies for six months. The former debtors should then be able to participate normally in economic life again. Due to the longer storage at the Schufa and other credit bureaus, this is often not possible for much longer.

For this reason, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is negotiating what credit bureaus like the Schufa are allowed and not. The credit agency may have anticipated a decision in the procedure regarding data storage at the Schufa with its conceding.

These apps help you to save in everyday life:

Schufa score illegal? Important decision still open

The more important decision is still open. Because here at stake is whether the Schufa can continue to work as before. For the Advocate General at the ECJ Priit Pikamäe, the entire Schufa scoring procedure is potentially illegal. Because a machine makes automated decisions about people, the Schufa score is not compatible with the General Data Protection Regulation, he argues.

An official decision on the cases is still pending. However, if the Schufa fails to store the insolvency data for a longer period of time, at least this procedure should soon become irrelevant.

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