Credit ratings reflect the credit quality of debt issuers (companies, states, financial institutions, structured finance deals…), i.e. their ability to fully honour their financial obligations in a timely manner.
Credit ratings are covered by transparent, specific methodologies and are reported using specific rating scales depending on whether we assign short-term ratings or long-term ratings.
As a registered credit rating agency, our ratings can be public (and have a regulatory value) or can remain private.
Asset classes covered: Corporates, Project Finance, Financial Institutions, Insurance, Sovereign, Structured Finance.
A solvency report assesses the ability of an issuer to meet its financial obligations in a timely manner. As such, it has the same characteristics as a credit rating report, except that the output is an opinion that contains an assessment of the creditworthiness of the issuer.
Solvency reports can therefore be used for internal purposes, as a tool in the decision-making process, or for investing purposes, either by potential investors or by the company itself in its search for potential investors.
A proxy private rating is an indicative creditworthiness assessment of the credit quality of an issuer or debt instrument, based on the analysis of public or private information provided by the party initiating the request. The proxy rating is based on EthiFinance Ratings’ credit scorecards with an emphasis on financial factors (due to lack of access to qualitative factors).
Deprived of public regulatory value, proxy private ratings are generally used for internal purposes such as determining interest rates for transfer pricing policies (intercompany financing) or accounting policies (IFRS 16).