Facts
SCHUFA runs a credit reference agency in Germany. It uses a mathematical-statistical method to turn stored data into probability values (scores) that let its customers estimate how a prospective contracting partner is likely to pay. In 2023 SCHUFA gave the claimants, private individuals, tables setting out the data it held on them and the scores sent out over the previous twelve months. The claimants sued for an explanation of how their scores were calculated and for pre-trial legal costs. The regional courts dismissed the information claims. The Dresden Higher Regional Court ordered SCHUFA to disclose, among other things, the weighting of the criteria that most influenced the scores and the data used for the claimants' base scores.
Question
The question was when a credit agency's score triggers the right under Article 15(1)(h) GDPR to meaningful information about the logic involved in automated decision-making. Under the CJEU's 2023 SCHUFA judgment (C-634/21), that right exists only where all elements of Article 22(1) are met: a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, that produces legal effects concerning the person or similarly significantly affects them. The BGH had to decide how that test applies where SCHUFA calculates the score but a bank or other company takes the contract decision, and who must prove that the score drove that decision.
Decision
The BGH set aside the Dresden judgments in so far as they upheld the claims and remitted the cases; parts of their operative orders were too imprecise. SCHUFA's scoring is profiling under Article 4(4) GDPR, and calculating a score is already a “decision” under Article 22(1). But the appeal court had not established whether a third party's contract decision about each claimant depended decisively on the score. The claimant bears the burden of proof, but the EU principle of effectiveness keeps the bar low: showing that SCHUFA sent a score to a company and that an adverse decision followed close in time raises a factual presumption, which SCHUFA may rebut. If information is owed, the 2023 letters did not suffice.
Why it matters
The ruling translates the CJEU's SCHUFA test into German procedure. By presuming that a score sent shortly before an adverse decision was decisive, the BGH expressly departed from several higher regional courts that had required more of claimants. Because it treats the calculation of the score as the “decision”, the key question in such cases will be the score's effect on the third party's contract decision. A bank's own statutory duty to assess creditworthiness does not by itself defeat the presumption. The scope of the information SCHUFA must give remains open and will be decided on remand.
Related stages
This is a separate case from the CJEU's SCHUFA judgment of 7 December 2023 (C-634/21, schufa-credit-scoring), on which the BGH relied. The four judgments (I ZR 227/25 to I ZR 230/25) set aside Dresden Higher Regional Court judgments of 7 October 2025 (4 U 144/25, 4 U 883/24, 4 U 1492/24, 4 U 615/25). The cases return to that court, where the claimants may cure the lack of precision in their claims identified by the BGH. On what an explanation must contain, see also the CJEU's Dun & Bradstreet Austria judgment of 27 February 2025 (dun-bradstreet-austria-explanation).