If you want to apply for a loan or even conclude a mobile phone contract, you will be checked in terms of creditworthiness. You can see the “credit score” – and also influence them positively.
How creditworthy am I? This is a question that consumers always have to ask themselves when they apply for a loan. For example for real estate purchase or auto leasing.
Whether you can borrow money from a bank and what conditions this is possible decides the creditworthiness or “creditworthiness”.
Before a loan contract can be signed, customers are to be tested, as Stephanie Pallasch from the Stiftung Warentest explains: “To check whether you are creditworthy or not, the banks actually always proceed. Record expenditure.
All possible data is collected
But that's not enough. The banks, leasing companies or even mobile operators get further data about the creditworthiness of the credit customers to ensure that a loan can also be repaid, “in addition to this test, the banks usually make a Schufa query,” said Pallasch. “That means they look whether you are already a good customer at the banks, whether you may have loans beforehand or even loan and whether you have been properly fulfilled your contractual obligations in the past.”
The Schufa, as well as other information, such as creditreform, collect all sorts of data. For example, whether you always pay your bills on time or have been in arrears. Whether you regularly cover your account or like to take advantage of the scope of your credit card.
No more Schufa clause
All of this data collect information such as Schufa on behalf of thousands of companies in Germany. As a customer, you give your consent regularly if you open an account or also conclude a mobile phone contract. Until 2018, the so-called “Schufa clause” in credit contracts, which one had to expressly agreed. In the meantime, the contractual partner with his signature is allowed to also call up personal financial data.
These are, for example, data on checking accounts or credit cards, credit contracts on running. And this also includes if a consumer has not always acted “in accordance with the contract”: So, for example, has only paid an invoice using a dunning procedure or even experienced a collection procedure.
“Score” should Solvency depict
A so-called “credit rating score” is determined from this. He is intended to provide information about how to pay – or “willingness to pay” – a credit customer. The score is intended to determine the probability of a failure to pay by a customer.
If you note a few rules, you can improve this loan score, says Andreas Bermig from the Bonify startup, which gives users insight into your own Schufa rating. “The most important thing is, of course, to pay reliably and to ensure that there are not always bills slipping again and again,” so Bermig, “that no payments go back from the account by return.”
Message only from two reminders
Open invoices are only reported to the Schufa according to Bermig if at least twice has been warned in writing. In addition, customers must have been pointed out to the Schufa. And there is also no entry if the claim had been denied at the time of the message.
But you can do more, so bermig. Namely to keep an eye on his credit assessment at Schufa. “Whether new loans or credit cards, the opening of several bank accounts: the scoring quickly changes,” says the expert. “And you can only notice that if you watch your score regularly.”
Wrong entries must be deleted
The same applies if you want to make sure that it has its correctness with all Schufa entries. Anyone who has become the victim of data theft can make sure by querying his Schufa data that there are no entries that are not responsible. Schufa is obliged to delete such entries with certain deadlines.
If you want to check your credit score, you can do this at any time at Schufa on the Internet or for service providers like Bonify. The queries are free.
