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A credit rating is an evaluation of the
credit risk A credit risk is risk of default on a debt that may arise from a borrower failing to make required payments. In the first resort, the risk is that of the lender and includes lost principal and interest, disruption to cash flows, and increased ...
of a prospective
debtor A debtor or debitor is a legal entity (legal person) that owes a debt to another entity. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor. When the counterpart of this ...
(an individual, a
business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
,
company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...
or a government), predicting their ability to pay back the debt, and an implicit forecast of the likelihood of the debtor defaulting. The credit rating represents an evaluation of a
credit rating agency A credit rating agency (CRA, also called a ratings service) is a company that assigns credit ratings, which rate a debtor's ability to pay back debt by making timely principal and interest payments and the likelihood of default. An agency may ra ...
of the qualitative and quantitative information for the prospective debtor, including information provided by the prospective debtor and other non-public information obtained by the credit rating agency's analysts. Credit reporting (or
credit score A credit score is a numerical expression based on a level analysis of a person's credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of an individual. A credit score is primarily based on a credit report, information typically sourced from credit bu ...
) – is a subset of credit rating – it is a numeric evaluation of an ''individual's'' credit worthiness, which is done by a
credit bureau A credit bureau is a data collection agency that gathers account information from various creditors and provides that information to a consumer reporting agency in the United States, a credit reference agency in the United Kingdom, a credit repor ...
or consumer credit reporting agency.


Sovereign credit ratings

A sovereign credit rating is the credit rating of a
sovereign ''Sovereign'' is a title which can be applied to the highest leader in various categories. The word is borrowed from Old French , which is ultimately derived from the Latin , meaning 'above'. The roles of a sovereign vary from monarch, ruler or ...
entity, such as a national government. The sovereign credit rating indicates the risk level of the investing environment of a country and is used by investors when looking to invest in particular jurisdictions, and also takes into account
political risk Political risk is a type of risk faced by investors, corporations, and governments that political decisions, events, or conditions will significantly affect the profitability of a business actor or the expected value of a given economic action. Po ...
. The "
country risk Country risk refers to the risk of investing or lending in a country, arising from possible changes in the business environment that may adversely affect operating profits or the value of assets in the country. For example, financial factors such ...
rankings" table shows the ten least-risky countries for investment . Ratings are further broken down into components including political risk, economic risk. Euromoney's bi-annual country risk index monitors the political and economic stability of 185 sovereign countries, with
Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
emerging as the least risky country since 2017 – it is also the one of the only few countries in the world as well as the only in Asia to achieve a AAA sovereign credit rankings from all major credit agencies. Results focus foremost on economics, specifically
sovereign default A sovereign default is the failure or refusal of the government of a sovereign state to pay back its debt in full when due. Cessation of due payments (or receivables) may either be accompanied by that government's formal declaration that it wi ...
risk or payment default risk for exporters (also known as a
trade credit Trade credit is the loan extended by one trader to another when the goods and services are bought on credit. Trade credit facilitates the purchase of supplies without immediate payment. Trade credit is commonly used by business organizations as a ...
risk).
A. M. Best AM Best is an American credit rating agency headquartered in Oldwick, New Jersey, that focuses on the insurance industry. Both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners have designate ...
defines "country risk" as the risk that country-specific factors could adversely affect an insurer's ability to meet its financial obligations.


Short and long-term ratings

A rating expresses the likelihood that the rated party will go into default within a given
time horizon Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to co ...
. In general, a time horizon of one year or under is considered short term, and anything above that is considered long term. In the past institutional investors preferred to consider long-term ratings. Nowadays, short-term ratings are commonly used.


Corporate credit ratings

Credit ratings can address a corporation's
financial instrument Financial instruments are monetary contracts between parties. They can be created, traded, modified and settled. They can be cash (currency), evidence of an ownership interest in an entity or a contractual right to receive or deliver in the form ...
s i.e.
debt Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money or other agreed-upon value to another party, the creditor. Debt is a deferred payment, or series of payments, which differentiates it from an immediate purchase. The ...
security Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social ...
such as a
bond Bond or bonds may refer to: Common meanings * Bond (finance), a type of debt security * Bail bond, a commercial third-party guarantor of surety bonds in the United States * Chemical bond, the attraction of atoms, ions or molecules to form chemica ...
, but also the corporations itself. Ratings are assigned by
credit rating agencies A credit rating agency (CRA, also called a ratings service) is a company that assigns credit ratings, which rate a debtor's ability to pay back debt by making timely principal and interest payments and the likelihood of default. An agency may ra ...
, the largest of which are
Standard & Poor's S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor's and informally known as S&P) is an American credit rating agency (CRA) and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is con ...
,
Moody's Moody's Investors Service, often referred to as Moody's, is the bond credit rating business of Moody's Corporation, representing the company's traditional line of business and its historical name. Moody's Investors Service provides international ...
and
Fitch Ratings Fitch Ratings Inc. is an American credit rating agency and is one of the " Big Three credit rating agencies", the other two being Moody's and Standard & Poor's. It is one of the three nationally recognized statistical rating organizations (NRSRO) ...
. They use letter designations such as A, B, C. Higher grades are intended to represent a lower
probability of default Probability of default (PD) is a financial term describing the likelihood of a default over a particular time horizon. It provides an estimate of the likelihood that a borrower will be unable to meet its debt obligations. PD is used in a variet ...
. Agencies do not attach a hard number of probability of default to each grade, preferring descriptive definitions such as: "the obligor's capacity to meet its financial commitment on the obligation is extremely strong," or "less vulnerable to non-payment than other speculative issues…" (Standard and Poors' definition of an AAA-rated and a BB-rated bond respectively). However, some studies have estimated the average risk and reward of bonds by rating. One study by Moody'sCantor, R., Hamilton, D.T., Kim, F., and Ou, S., 2007 Corporate default and recovery rates. 1920-2006, ''Special Comment:'' Moody's investor Service, June Report 102071, 1-48 page 24cited by authors Herwig Langohr and Patricia Langohr claimed that over a "5-year time horizon" bonds it gave its highest rating (Aaa) to had a "cumulative default rate" of 0.18%, the next highest (Aa2) 0.28%, the next (Baa2) 2.11%, 8.82% for the next (Ba2), and 31.24% for the lowest it studied (B2). (See "Default rate" in "Estimated spreads and default rates by rating grade" table to right.) Over a longer period, it stated "the order is by and large, but not exactly, preserved". Another study in ''Journal of Finance'' calculated the additional interest rate or "spread" corporate bonds pay over that of "riskless" US Treasury bonds, according to the bonds' rating. (See "Basis point spread" in table to right.) Looking at rated bonds for 1973–89, the authors found a AAA-rated bond paid 43 "
basis points A basis point (often abbreviated as bp, often pronounced as "bip" or "beep") is one hundredth of 1 percentage point. The related term ''#Permyriad, permyriad'' means one hundredth of 1 percent. Changes of interest rates are often stated in basis ...
" (or 43/100 of a percentage point) over a US Treasury bond (so that it would yield 3.43% if the Treasury yielded 3.00%). A CCC-rated "junk" (or speculative) bond, on the other hand, paid over 7% (724 basis points) more than a Treasury bond on average over that period.from Altman, Edward I "Measuring Corporate Bond Mortality and Performance" ''Journal of Finance'', (September 1989) pp. 909–22 Different rating agencies may use variations of an alphabetical combination of lowercase and uppercase letters, with either plus or minus signs or numbers added to further fine-tune the rating (see colored chart). The Standard & Poor's rating scale uses uppercase letters and pluses and minuses. The Moody's rating system uses numbers and lowercase letters as well as uppercase. While Moody's, S&P and Fitch Ratings control approximately 95% of the credit ratings business, they are not the only rating agencies. DBRS's long-term ratings scale is somewhat similar to Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings with the words high and low replacing the + and −. It goes as follows, from excellent to poor: AAA, AA (high), AA, AA (low), A (high), A, A (low), BBB (high), BBB, BBB (low), BB (high), BB, BB (low), B (high), B, B (low), CCC (high), CCC, CCC (low), CC (high), CC, CC (low), C (high), C, C (low) and D. The short-term ratings often map to long-term ratings though there is room for exceptions at the high or low side of each equivalent. S&P, Moody's, Fitch and DBRS are the only four ratings agencies that are recognized by the
European Central Bank The European Central Bank (ECB) is the prime component of the monetary Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's Big Four (banking)#Intern ...
(ECB) for determining collateral requirements for banks to borrow from the central bank. The ECB uses a first, best rule among the four agencies that have the designated ECAI status, which means that it takes the highest rating among the four agencies – S&P, Moody's, Fitch and DBRS – to determine
haircuts A hairstyle, hairdo, haircut or coiffure refers to the styling of hair, usually on the human scalp. Sometimes, this could also mean an editing of facial or body hair. The fashioning of hair can be considered an aspect of personal grooming ...
and collateral requirements for borrowing. Ratings in Europe have been under close scrutiny, particularly the highest ratings given to countries like Spain, Ireland and Italy, because they affect how much banks can borrow against sovereign debt they hold. A. M. Best rates from excellent to poor in the following manner: A++, A+, A, A−, B++, B+, B, B−, C++, C+, C, C−, D, E, F, and S. The CTRISKS rating system is as follows: CT3A, CT2A, CT1A, CT3B, CT2B, CT1B, CT3C, CT2C and CT1C. All these CTRISKS grades are mapped to one-year probability of default. Under the EU Credit Rating Agency Regulation (CRAR), the European Banking Authority has developed a series of mapping tables that map ratings to the "Credit Quality Steps" (CQS) as set out in regulatory capital rules and map the CQS to short run and long run benchmark default rates. These are provided in the table below:


See also

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List of countries by government budget The list is mainly based on CIA World Factbook for the year 2016 and 2019. The Chinese, Brazilian, Indian, and United States government budgets are the figures reported by the International Monetary Fund. The table includes information from gover ...
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List of countries by credit rating This is a list of countries by credit rating, showing long-term foreign currency credit ratings for sovereign bonds as reported by the largest three major credit rating agencies: Standard & Poor's, Fitch, and Moody's. The list also includes all ...
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List of countries by tax revenue to GDP ratio This article lists countries alphabetically, with total tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) for the listed countries. The tax percentage for each country listed in the source has been added to the chart. Tax as ...
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List of countries by public debt Below is a list of countries and territories by government debt , public debt (also called government debt or sovereign debt). ''Gross'' government debt is government financial liabilities that are debt instruments. A ''debt instrument'' is a f ...
Individuals: *
Credit history :''This article deals with the general concept of the term credit history. For detailed information about the same topic in the United States, see Credit score in the United States.'' A credit history is a record of a borrower's responsible repay ...
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Credit score A credit score is a numerical expression based on a level analysis of a person's credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of an individual. A credit score is primarily based on a credit report, information typically sourced from credit bu ...


References


External links

* {{Authority control Credit Rating