Important for borrowing
Schufa opens out of 2026 credit calculation for consumers
Transparency instead of “blackbox”: How you will soon find out free of charge whether and why your Schufa score wobbles-and which twelve criteria really count now.
Anyone who needs a loan usually cannot avoid the Schufa. But how does the evaluation of the information agency come about? From the first quarter of 2026, the information agency wants to give full insight. Then the simplified score, which provides information about the creditworthiness, should be fully available for consumers – by free digital insight into your personal data either in the Schufa app or online.
“The new Schufa score is already productive, the first customers use it,” said Schufa CEO Tanja Birkholz at the “Handelsblatt Banken-summit” in Frankfurt. “We have already delivered the new score 70,000 times, with two thirds of our largest customers we have already agreed migration plans.”
The Schufa therefore expects the revised score to make around ten percent of creditworthiness inquiries at the end of the fourth quarter of this year. In the first quarter of 2026, the explanatory tool for consumers is to be activated. The previous so-called base core will probably be a thing of the past at the end of the first quarter, said the Schufa boss.
Poorer evaluation can make loans more expensive
The calculations of the information agency based in Wiesbaden, for example, are an important yardstick for banks, mail order companies and mobile operators. Because you want to know how your customers’ payment standards are before contracts are concluded and handed over.
Consumer advocates have long been calling for more transparency from Schufa. Again and again the information egg had to be accused of being a “black box” because it is not disclosed how the score is calculated exactly.
Schufa promises: lay people can also calculate new score
The calculation of the new scores flows into how long you can use a credit card or a checking account or whether there are negative entries because invoices have not been paid even after several reminders.
Points are awarded for a total of twelve criteria, in total 100 to 999. The higher the total number of points, the higher the creditworthiness of the respective consumer is assessed. When presenting the revised scores in early April, Schufa had guaranteed that lay people could also recalculate it without much effort.
dpa
Source: Stern
