Credit agencies and credit score

Do you want to apply for a loan from a bank, take out a new mobile phone contract or pay for something via PayPal or Klarna in instalments? Then credit agencies play a role without you necessarily realising it. Credit agencies are private companies that store data on companies and private individuals and use it to calculate how likely they are to pay their bills. These valuations can play a major role in larger purchase contracts, instalment payments, the granting of credit and also when concluding a rental agreement. If the credit agencies assess you as not creditworthy, the contract will most likely be rejected or offered under less favourable conditions. But what exactly is actually stored there? Will this data be deleted again? And what happens if a credit agency has stored incorrect data about me?

Credit agencies store data for various reasons. However, this article will focus primarily on negative entries. Negative entries are entries that have a negative impact on your credit rating. Examples of this include

• Debts that have not been repaid despite several reminders or
• ongoing or completed consumer insolvency proceedings.

However, some entries cannot be categorised as either negative or positive. For example, a credit card can improve your rating because the bank thinks you can repay the card debt. But if you have too many credit cards, this can have a negative impact on the rating. Because this can mean that you have money problems. This also applies to loans and credit enquiries.

If you have debts that you have not been able to repay despite several reminders, these are not automatically stored with credit agencies. The credit agencies have contractual partners. These are mainly banks, large companies and debt collection agencies. In addition to the data from public directories, credit agencies only receive data from you if a contractual partner informs the credit agency. All debts to state institutions such as the tax office or the job centre are not stored, nor are debts to private individuals.

You may be annoyed because a credit check in the past has resulted in you being refused a flat or a loan. However, if you are in debt, the data from the credit agencies can also be useful:

• If you already have a good overview of your debts, you can compare them with the data from the credit agencies. Especially in the case of older receivables, it occasionally happens that documents are lost. The comparison makes it less likely that receivables will be forgotten. If you still don't have an overview of your debts, our debt sorting aid can help.
• If you are missing a lot of documents about your debts, you can get an initial overview with the data from the credit agencies. However, this does not guarantee the completeness of your data.

You have the right to receive a free self-disclosure once a year. However, some credit agencies also sell the self-disclosure with special additional content or as a fast delivery. However, you will find a complete overview of all stored information in the free self-disclosure (sometimes also called "data copy according to Art. 15 GDPR"). The free self-disclosure is also sufficient for the on-site debt counselling service to complete your overview with you.

You can request a self-disclosure here:

Schufa

Boniversum

Infoscore

Crif

The individual credit agencies receive your data from different companies. In order to obtain the best possible overview, it is therefore advisable to obtain several self-disclosures.

It can happen that credit agencies store incorrect data about you due to confusion. Then, for example, your credit application is wrongly rejected because debts of another person with the same name were mistakenly attributed to you. Or a contractual partner does not report that an invoice has been paid. In these cases, it is advisable to contact the credit agency. If the problem cannot be solved there, there is still the option of contacting the Schufa ombudsman's office, for example. If no agreement is reached with the credit reference agency, the joint external complaints office of the credit reference agencies and the federal and state data protection supervisory authorities can help.

How to contact the credit agencies:

• Schufa correction request and ombudsman's office
• Crif
• Boniversum
• Infoscore/Experian
• joint external Complaints office of the credit agencies

The stored data has different retention periods and must also be deleted again. The credit agencies have defined common rules of conduct for this purpose, which must be approved by the responsible State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information if they are changed. For example, the following retention periods are specified therein:

The list only includes characteristics associated with debt. An overview of all retention periods can be found in the rules of conduct of the credit agencies.