Paid, but still stored? BGH approves three years

The case

A consumer had settled no fewer than three claims that were recorded at SCHUFA as payment defaults: EUR 150 from a claim established by an enforceable title (titulierte Forderung) from 2018, settled at the end of 2020; EUR 428.27 from a claim from 2020 for which several reminders had been sent, settled at the end of 2021; and EUR 160.99 from a further titled claim from 2021, settled at the end of 2022. SCHUFA deleted the entries only gradually, some of them only during the ongoing proceedings, each after around three years or under the new 18-month rules. What remained was the dispute over damages.

The judgment of the OLG Köln

In its judgment of 10 April 2025 – 15 U 249/24, the Cologne Higher Regional Court (OLG Köln) ordered SCHUFA to pay EUR 500 in non-material damages plus legal fees. Its reasoning: the principle in § 882e(3) no. 1 ZPO (German Code of Civil Procedure), under which an entry in the public register of debtors (Schuldnerverzeichnis) is deleted immediately once the creditor has been satisfied in full, must be transferred to private credit agencies in the absence of a statutory provision.

The BGH's decision

In its judgment of 18 December 2025 – I ZR 97/25, the BGH (Federal Court of Justice) took a different view and set the judgment aside. Unlike in the case of discharge of residual debt (Restschuldbefreiung), on which the CJEU (Court of Justice of the European Union) had ruled in 2023, SCHUFA as a rule does not take payment default data from the public register of debtors, but receives it directly from its contractual partners — often considerably earlier than an entry in the register of debtors would even be possible. The immediate deletion applicable there can therefore not simply be transferred, also because the register of debtors provides only rough negative information, whereas SCHUFA paints a more differentiated picture of creditworthiness.

The credit agencies' model

At the same time, the BGH expressly approves the model of the codes of conduct drawn up by the credit agencies and approved by the Hessian Commissioner for Data Protection with effect from 1 January 2025: as a rule, three years of storage after the claim has been settled, reduced to 18 months if no further negative data has been added by then, there is no information from the register of debtors or from insolvency notices, and the claim was settled within 100 days of the report. The BGH considers this standardisation to be appropriate in principle in the interest of legal certainty and because of the credit agencies' mass business — but only if the debtor retains the possibility of putting forward special circumstances of their individual case that exceptionally justify even shorter storage. The Cologne Higher Regional Court must now do exactly that.

A further point: Art. 82 GDPR

A further point is noteworthy: the BGH indicates that SCHUFA could be exempt from liability under Art. 82(3) GDPR if it complied with the codes of conduct applicable at the time — it expressly leaves this question open. For data subjects, this means: according to this judgment, there is no general right to immediate deletion after payment, and even unlawfully excessive storage does not necessarily lead to damages. Anyone who wants to obtain earlier deletion should set out specific special circumstances of their case, for example a very small claim or considerable, demonstrable disadvantages caused by the continuing entry.

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