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Comment by wolframhempel | Hacker News Reader

What surprised me about Schufa is that the certificate it provides only states that you didn't have any defaults or delinquencies in Germany. That's quite different from a credit rating in the US sense that you can build up by consistently borrowing and repaying over time.

When I moved to Berlin after having lived in London, my Schufa was thus as pristine as possible - simply because I had no German credit history to begin with.

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I do feel they are increasingly modelling themselves after the US system, seemingly only impeded by stricter data protection laws. Schufa, as you said, used to be mostly the exchange of negative-only debtor information (i.e. Schufa having no information about you is a good sign for your creditworthiness). I'd say in the last 15 years (or so) we've arrived at the point where Schufa having no information about you is about as bad as having negative information. Exactly like in the US. The only difference being that for their main consumer product you are still fine to get the "Nothing negative to report" document, as that is what's accepted by most landlords.

they have many different scores.

the main consumer-facing score is what you are describing, which is never used by their customers.

for customers (banks,insurances, retail companies etc.) they have scores tailored to their industry (branchenscore), which also includes repaid loans etc.

the "basisscore" is pretty much useless, it's only a number given out to consumers.

in case you speak german: i wrote up an article about their scoring some time ago.

in the following section i talk a little bit about the differences between "branchenscores" and the "basisscore": https://onlinekredit.com/schufa-scoring#der-schufa-basisscor...

They do calculate a score, for use by their customers, which also includes your credit history. But if you don't have any, well.

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