Schufa wants to become more transparent. A big promise after decades of watching your most important business secret with eagle eyes: the Schufa score. But the credit agency keeps its word: consumers can now use the online score simulator, which you can use to find out exactly where you stand.
Schufa starts score simulator: That’s behind it
Schufa is keeping its promise: there is now a simulation that consumers can use to better understand how the well-known Schufa score is composed. “The score simulator is another milestone on the way to the Schufa more transparency and consumer friendliness. This makes the scoring principle of Schufa comprehensible for the first time,” announces Tanja Birkholz, CEO of Schufa (source: Schufa).
But what exactly can consumers do with it? The score simulator can be found online via the Schufa website. Based on seven questions you click through data that the Schufa also uses for scoring: How old is your oldest current account, whether you use one or more current installment loans or buy online on account, for example.
Schufa does not receive any private data from you. Instead, you choose the answer options that best suit you from the given options. There is an explanation for each question as to why and how the information plays a role in the assessment of the Schufa.
Then you get as a result one of five ratings: excellent, good, acceptable, sufficient or insufficient. The latter corresponds to the negative Schufa score. You only end up here if you have not paid outstanding bills despite a reminder or, for example, go into personal bankruptcy. Consumers can only get out of this category, even with the real Schufa score, if the outstanding claims have been settled.
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Consumers can mostly rely on the simulator
The score simulator does not provide a complete picture. More and more precise data is included in the real Schufa score. The Schufa had already given a first insight. If you answer the questions honestly, you can still, according to Schufa a reliable result come out.
In 60.4 percent of cases should Result of the simulator correspond to the result class of the Schufa base score. This is calculated for orientation on the basis of the data known to Schufa about a person. According to the Schufa, 38.2 percent of people even get a better result in the base score than in the simulator, while only 1.4 percent do better in the base score than in the simulation.