SCHUFA Holding AG,  Wiesbaden Germany,  is acquiring the Berlin fintech company Forteil GmbH, provider of the well-known platform bonify, which offers services related to creditworthiness and personal finance. With this step, SCHUFA is accelerating the transformation of its private customer business. One goal of the transformation is to increase transparency and give private individuals more control over their data. Forteil GmbH (“bonify”) will remain a legally independent company. Both sides have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

Tanja Birkholz, Chair of the Board of Directors of SCHUFA, says: “With bonify’s customer focus and digital capabilities, we will continue to drive forward the transformation of SCHUFA into a company that is geared towards the wishes and needs of consumers. We are combining the experience of SCHUFA in a common strategy and roadmap with the speed and innovative power of the fintech advantage.”We are improving the quality and service of our offering for private individuals and are becoming faster in the development of value-adding, digital products and apps,” Birkholz explains the aim of the takeover. “Specifically, private individuals will receive free digital insight into their personal SCHUFA data via bonify for the first time in 2023 – one year earlier than originally planned.”

SCHUFA and bonify have been working together intensively since this year, for example on the development of the SCHUFA app. In May 2022, SCHUFA and bonify announced their cooperation.

Since it was founded in 2015, Bonify has successfully established itself with a clear focus on consumer interests with a target group that is interested in creditworthiness and financial issues online. The website www.bonify.de is used by more than a million people a year who are looking for digital creditworthiness products.

“SCHUFA is exactly the right company to fulfill bonify’s mission, namely to holistically improve people’s financial lives. The ingredients for this: transparency, the will to help and technical innovations,” says Andreas Bermig, founder and CEO of bonify. “With the SCHUFA score, we finally have the piece of the puzzle that we have been missing all along: the most relevant score in the German market. This improves our offer significantly. Not only our users benefit from this, but all consumers in Germany.”

Source: SCHUFA