What is Creditreform?

When it comes to high value deals, you want to be financially secure. A payment default can become a great risk for you. In the Creditreform you can find out about the creditworthiness of private individuals or companies beforehand. The credit check provides valuable input for assessing whether you want to enter into a business relationship. The association is financed through membership fees and the fees you have to pay for information.

How Creditreform came about

At Creditreform you will receive information on the annual turnover of a company, balance sheet and employee figures as well as other key figures. This is among the information that merchants and lenders can obtain about companies. Since 1990, Creditreform has been assessing the creditworthiness of companies as well as the payment behavior of private individuals.

Creditworthiness means the ability to repay debts taken on. This does not mean liquidity, i.e. the availability of financial resources to purchase goods. For this purpose, the association saves information about addresses and the typical risk of payment default of people in the respective region - the so-called

Scoring process. The organization started out small over a hundred years ago and has grown steadily.

In 1879 traders and tradespeople founded the “Verein Cash Payment Mainz” - the forerunner of today's Creditreform. The merger should serve to no longer have a customer credit to grant who owes money to a club member. The members wanted to protect themselves from the abuse of credit. They helped each other collect debts.

The cooperation with other credit associations created a network in which traders could find out about the payment behavior of potential customers. You can still benefit from this idea today if you want to find out about possible clients and avoid payment defaults. In 1879 the association changed its name to "Creditreform Association for Protection against Harmful Credit Giving", from which Creditreform later emerged.

In 1883 the organization merged with other credit reporting agencies and formed the umbrella organization “Verband der Vereine Creditreform e. V. "(VVC). Today the credit agency is a stock corporation with regional branches.

Business lines and procedures

The umbrella organization Creditreform is divided into several local associations. As an entrepreneur, you are a member of one of the regional associations that belong to the Creditreform umbrella company in Neuss. The organization is internationally positioned and cooperates with national companies in almost all EU countries as well as Turkey and China. You will receive information from companies in these countries. Creditreform serves various business areas. This information is chargeable.

Creditreform also provides you with information about the creditworthiness of a company, its balance sheet and the environment of its customers. This includes the excerpt from the commercial register and goes all the way to a company rating. The data for this come from publicly accessible registers (such as the extract from the commercial register) or from Bankssharing data on debt. Other sources are contractual partners such as credit card organizations, insurance companies and lists of debtors in the local courts.

On the basis of the information from Creditreform, companies estimate how high the risk of payment default is for a business partner. You can adapt conditions, for example interest on arrears in the event of late payment, to your customers and be warned if a company's creditworthiness is bad.

Receivables management means debt collection, i.e. the realization of open receivables. This is what distinguishes Creditreform from SCHUFA. The latter only provides information on the economic circumstances of consumers. The association offers you as a customer a service for receivables management. The service includes reminders on behalf of the obligee, legal assertions and obtaining an enforcement order.

You can go online in a On-line- Research a database that summarizes essential information about numerous companies. Here you will find information on annual financial statements, data from the commercial register and creditworthiness information across Europe.

In addition to information about companies, Creditreform can provide you with data on consumers. These are notes on existing disclosure oaths, enforcement notices and scoring according to place of residence. Private individuals can view the stored data about themselves online (self-disclosure).

Address trading includes information about the place of residence, telephone number, occupation or other information. The association sells such data for marketing purposes. Creditreform is subject to data protection law in address trading. The association may only pass on your address, but not data on payment history.

As you can see, the association offers many services as well as information about the credit rating index and debt. As an entrepreneur, you can even use a full service for receivables management.