• You want to be kept permanently up-to-date on your customers' payment behaviour, because comprehensive risk management includes consistent monitoring of the creditworthiness of your existing customers.
  
  
• Analysis of customer profiles in debt collection cases shows that existing customers often account for up to 50 to 70 % of bad debts. The main reason for such a scenario is a lack of monitoring.
  
  
• arvato infoscore can advise you immediately of any changes in the credit rating of your customers. Legal requirement to be fulfilled is a permanent legitimate interest according to the Federal German Data Protection Act.* If a permanent legitimate interest persists, there is no need for separate credit enquiries for additional orders, as the most current credit rating status is already known. If the credit rating deteriorates, you can take immediate action to implement appropriate risk management initiatives. Such initiatives could include adjusting credit limits and delivery and payment arrangements. At the same time, you can optimise your advertising costs, since you will not be trying to attract existing customers whose credit rating has deteriorated sharply. Conversely, customers whose credit rating improves can be targeted again.
  
  
• If a permanent legitimate interest does not persist, arvato infoscore offers a specialised solution for the risk management of existing customers. The multiple-client check is our customised service for mail-order companies due to the legal changes since 1st October 2008. According to a decision of the "Duesseldorfer Kreis"** credit agencies are not allowed anymore to offer the existing monitoring service to mail-order companies. Mail-order firms can therefore use a credit rating check via our service multiple-client check upon any follow-up order and on competitive conditions. The protection from bad debt loss by means of the monitoring service can be maintained, if upon any follow-up order a new credit rating check is conducted. The customised identification of risky follow-up orders does thus avoid potential payment defaults in the mail-order business.

* With a current payment by instalments or credit line and/or as long as a debit balance has to be settled on the mail-order account
** Association of all supreme supervisory authorities in Germany for the data protection in the private sector