Creditreform

Creditreform
legal form	Joint stock company , limited partnership
founding	March 9, 1879
Seat	Neuss , Germany
management	Christian Wolfram, President of the Board of the Association of Creditreform Associations. V. Volker Ulbricht, General Manager of the Association of Associations Creditreform e. V.
Number of employees	Europe-wide 4,198 (2017), Germany-wide 3,309 (group of companies, 2017)
sales	582 million euros (overall organization, 2017), 582 million euros (Germany, 2015)
Branch	Credit agency , accounts receivable management , factoring , Marketing
Website	www.creditreform.de

The business group Creditreform acts as a credit agency and debt collection services as well as in other business areas.

history

Creditreform was founded on March 9, 1879 in Mainz by a group of 25 small tradespeople and traders as the Cash Payment Association Mainz with the aim of not giving any more credit to customers who owe something to a member of the association. The club changed already on August 9, 1879 in the name of Creditreform for protection against harmful Credit Enter . Protection of the members against the misuse of the credit, support with the collection of outstanding debts, reform of the credit conditions and above all a secure information distribution through a network with other credit associations on the principle of reciprocity were defined as new association goals. Shortly after it was founded, there were 15 independent associations in Germany based on the same idea, which came under the umbrella organization Verband der Vereine Creditreform e. V. (VVC) merged.

Since 1928, for example, information on annual sales, balance sheet figures, number of employees and capital resources have been included in the information in order to enable traders and companies to carry out a credit check . During this time, Creditreform introduced a uniform information system. In 1947 the VVC moved from the Soviet-occupied Leipzig to Neuss . After the oil price shock in 1973 and the end of fixed exchange rates in international payments, the organization's area of responsibility changed to the early detection of credit risks. In 1979 the data that were previously only available regionally were combined in a central database . Since 1990, private individuals have also been rated with their creditworthiness.

Between 2009 and 2011, Creditreform introduced a generation of information, which, in addition to solutions for credit decisions in the medium and high risk area, also offers information formats for credit checks for low risks. More than 42 million payment documents from the German accounts receivable register, Creditreform's pool of payment experience, are important. In addition, around 11.8 million balance sheets are available for over one million companies. Additional content includes information on the probability of failure of a company, the holdings and functions of those involved, as well as the company status and company history. An essential feature of the credit information is the creditworthiness index , which is used to measure the probability of default of receivables. Further new developments were made available in the area of monitoring - the monitoring of the creditworthiness of a business partner in an ongoing customer relationship.

Since February 2011, Creditreform has been integrating a further developed version of the creditworthiness index into the various product formats of company information. For this purpose, the calculation method and the information basis for the creditworthiness index were further developed. Together with the most precise information possible on the probability of default of the respective company, the resulting creditworthiness index should help to distinguish between potentially profitable and lossy transactions or business partners even more precisely. For payment processing in e-commerce, Creditreform provides CrefoPay, which contains a credit rating and, if necessary, a transition to debt collection.

structure

The basic structure of Creditreform has hardly changed since 1879. A company is not customer Creditreform, but a member at one of the local clubs Creditreform. The business of these registered associations is managed by limited partnerships. All Creditreform associations are under the umbrella of the Verband der Vereine Creditreform e. V. with headquarters in Neuss.

In 2018 there were 129 regional Creditreform associations in Germany, which have 127,000 member companies as members. Today Creditreform is one of the largest credit reporting agencies with 167 branches and 155,000 members in Europe.

The national companies in Austria , Bulgaria , Switzerland , the Czech Republic , Estonia , Croatia , Serbia , Hungary , Ukraine , Italy , Lithuania , Luxembourg , Latvia , Poland , Romania , Russia , Slovenia , Slovakia , Great Britain , Turkey and China form the Creditreform International Group . This enables information about companies from these countries to be obtained.

In 2001 a holding company was founded with Creditreform AG , which unites other companies belonging to the group under one roof. Here are to be mentioned:

beDirect GmbH & Co. KG
Creditreform Boniversum GmbH
Creditreform Compliance Services GmbH
Creditreform Rating AG
CPM Creditreform Portfolio Management GmbH
Microm Micromarketing Systems and Consult GmbH
Digitalraum GmbH

Other companies in the Creditreform Group:

accredis Inkasso GmbH & Co. KG
Crefo factoring companies
ECOFIS GmbH

Business areas

The spectrum in the information area is initially divided into company information and information about private individuals. The information on private individuals is based on a database with around 120 million personal data records on almost 61 million German citizens. In times of increasingly cashless consumer transactions, the risk-relevant consumer information provided by private individuals makes it possible to secure (goods) credit decisions and to practice modern risk management.

Receivables management / debt collection

Creditreform offers services in the areas of receivables management and debt collection . The services offered range from reminders in the name of the obligee to judicial enforcement to monitoring the acquired title and the purchase of non-performing claims .

Online company database

The online company database is maintained by the Association of Creditreform Associations. V. operated. The online service was launched in 2004 through a cooperation with the Handelsblatt publishing group . The offer concentrates on the company data of Creditreform and enables research in the following databases:

Creditreform company profiles of companies registered in the commercial register from German-speaking countries
Creditreform annual financial statements for companies from Germany and Austria
European Business Register (European commercial register data )
Europe-wide credit reports from companies

Credit check for private individuals

Another business area of the Creditreform Group is the credit check of private individuals. Creditreform Boniversum GmbH provides companies with credit information about consumers. Creditreform Boniversum GmbH (Boniversum) was founded in 1997 as a company of the Creditreform Group with headquarters in Neuss and is a 100% subsidiary of Creditreform AG. Consumers can order their self-assessment online. Boniversum also informs private individuals about the topics of information, credit checks and data protection.

marketing

In addition, the Creditreform Group offers micro and geomarketing . Microm Micromarketing-Systeme und Consult GmbH is a target group specialist for consumer marketing. The focus of business activities is on customer and market structure analyzes as well as the optimization of marketing and sales measures, location evaluations and customer lifecycle processes.

criticism

In the radio program Mittagsmagazin , Westdeutsche Rundfunk reported in its program WDR 2 on November 11, 2008 under the heading Questionable dual role on Creditreform. The WDR criticized the fact that "Creditreform uses its dual role as a credit report and debt collection agency to intimidate consumers ". In this context, the company refers to the provisions of the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG), which regulate that information on payment delays may only be used to provide information under specified conditions.

In the study report Consumer Information Scoring , compiled by the GP research group on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection from June 2009, Creditreform is mentioned among other credit agencies. The aim of the project was to use 100 test persons to "determine in which way and to what extent consumer data is incorrectly stored in credit agencies and to develop strategies based on this knowledge that contribute to improving consumer information."

With regard to CEG Creditreform (since April 2012: Creditreform Boniversum GmbH), the report states that 5% of the checked consumer data stored at CEG Creditreform were incorrect.

The majority of the Creditreform inquiries (58%) allegedly only provide identification data, i.e. the information that the information seeker himself transmitted to Creditreform (age and address). The inquirer thus de facto feeds the database of the credit agency with his inquiry when he wants information. It is said that the test subjects were never given any scoring values.

Furthermore, it was determined using the example that, in practice, disputed data was not blocked by CEG Creditreform. CEG Creditreform also always refused the request to delete this information, stating that the information was transmitted in this form and could therefore not be deleted by CEG Creditreform. This procedure is also confirmed in the FAQ of the CEG Creditreform. In the case described in the report, the data provider again refused to delete it for formal reasons, which ultimately made deletion impossible. The report concludes that a clearer procedure should be sought in the future and that there is a need for regulation.

For Switzerland, an extract from the commercial register of a company, which can generally be found free of charge, must be paid for on the Creditreform website Firmenwissen.de in excess of 10 euros plus VAT.

literature

Stephan Gärtner: Hard negative features put to the test of data protection law. A legal comparison between German, English and Austrian law . Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8300-5418-4 .

Web links

Commons : Creditreform - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Creditreform business development 2015/16. Retrieved July 15, 2016 .

↑ 2011-01 Information film Creditreform credit rating index 2-0 ( Memento from July 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

↑ The Creditreform group of companies . Creditreform. December 19, 2014. Retrieved December 19, 2014.

^ Dieter Korczak, Michael Wilken: Consumer information scoring. Report on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (PDF; 1.1 MB). GP Research Group, Munich, June 2009, accessed on March 4, 2015.

↑ CEG Creditreform Consumer GmbH changes its name to Creditreform Boniversum GmbH and repositions itself . boniversum. April 19, 2012. Archived from the original on May 17, 2014. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 12, 2013. @1@ 2

↑ FAQ (PDF; 480 kB) from Creditreform Boniversum GmbH

[1] Creditreform business development 2015/16. Retrieved July 15, 2016 .

[2] 2011-01 Information film Creditreform credit rating index 2-0 ( Memento from July 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

[3] The Creditreform group of companies . Creditreform. December 19, 2014. Retrieved December 19, 2014.

[4] Dieter Korczak, Michael Wilken: Consumer information scoring. Report on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (PDF; 1.1 MB). GP Research Group, Munich, June 2009, accessed on March 4, 2015.