Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Building
Pricing
Portfolios
Credit
Ratings
Contracts Trading
Regulatory
Requirements
Credit ratings are critical to the activities of securities markets, as they are depended on to create and
manage investment portfolios, the pricing of new securities, trading of securities, financial contracts (and
loans) and for some financial institutions to meet regulatory requirements.
Example
Performs credit and risk analysis to produce ratings.
Activities Maintains databases of credit and risk information on companies and financial
securities.
Provides unbiased opinion. An independent credit rating agency provides an
unbiased opinion as to relative capability of a company to service debt obligations.
Provides quality and dependable information on investment and credit risk which is
more authenticate and reliable.
Provides information at low cost or no cost to investors.
Investors rely on the ratings assigned by the ratings agencies while taking
investment decisions.
Ratings are published in the form of reports and are available easily on the payment
of negligible price or free of charge depending on the arrangements in specific
countries.
Example A.M. Best; Credit Analysis & Research (CARE), India; Dominion Bond Rating
Service, Canada; Fitch Ratings, U.S. & UK; Investment Information and Credit
Companies Rating Agency (ICRA), India, Moody‟s, S&P. Complete list @:
http://www.defaultrisk.com/rating_agencies.htm
Formation of public policy: Once the debt securities are rated professionally, it
would be easier to formulate public policy guidelines as to the eligibility of
securities to be included in different kinds of institutional portfolios.
Analysis
Adjusted Financial
Statement Data
Rating Committee
Other Company
Package and
Specific Data
Recommendation
Industry / Macro
Economic Data
Key metrics
Weigh
Indicative Rating
Other qualitative factors
Final rating
The typical methods used by credit rating agencies to compare a individual rating analysis to key
metrics about that company, and benchmark data to weighted values and produce an indicative
rating. This is then reviewed internally to produce a final rating.
An investor uses the ratings to assess the risk level and compares the offered rate of
return with his expected rate of return (for the particular level of risk) to optimize his
risk-return trade-off.
The risk perception of a common investor, in the absence of a credit rating system,
largely depends on his familiarity with the names of company and what they might
know about the company.
It is not feasible for the corporate issuer of a debt instrument to offer every
prospective investor the opportunity to undertake a detailed risk evaluation.
For the typical investor, it would difficult to assess all of the financial information
available to assign their own risk ratings.
Thus the Ŷeed for Đredit ratiŶg iŶ today’s ǁ orld ĐaŶŶot ďe oǀ er eŵphasized.
Adjusted Financial
Statement Data
For Investors
Market access (gate keeping) Due diligence efficiency
Expands breadth of market Multiple independent perspectives
Widens distribution Facilitates comparisons
Improves liquidity Tool in portfolio management
Improves pricing Enhances secondary market liquidity
Helps management with Relatively stable over time
independent, outside perspective on Basis for performance benchmarks
company
Helps management monitor
counterparty risk
ISBN: 978-0-9824019-0-3