Credit Rating Agencies in India, Limitations of Rating

Credit Rating Agencies in India

Infomerics Valuation and Rating Private Limited

An RBI-accredited and SEBI-registered credit agency, Infomerics Valuation and Rating Private Limited saw its inception by eminent finance professionals and is now run under the leadership of Mr. Vipin Mallik. The credit bureau strives to offer an unbiased and detailed analysis and evaluation of credit worthiness to NBFCs, banks, corporates and small and medium scale units. It is through their rating and grading system that they determine the credit worthiness of an organisation. Infomerics helps in reducing any kind of information asymmetry amongst investors and lenders. Keeping transparency as it is core value, the credit bureau makes sure to deliver comprehensive and accurate reports and records of all their clients.

India Rating and Research Pvt. Ltd

India Ratings is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Fitch Group. It offers credit ratings for insurance companies, banks, corporate issuers, project finance, financial institutions, finance and leasing companies, managed funds, and urban local bodies. In addition to SEBI, the company is recognised by the Reserve Bank of India and National Housing Bank.

Credit Analysis and Research limited (CARE)

Launched in 1993, CARE offers credit rating services to areas such as corporate governance, debt ratings, financial sector, bank loan ratings, issuer ratings, recovery ratings, and infrastructure ratings. Headquartered in Mumbai, CARE offers two different categories of bank loan ratings, long-term and short-term debt instruments. The company also offers ratings for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), real estate, renewable energy service companies (RESCO), financial assessment of shipyards, Energy service companies (ESCO) grades various courses of educational institutions. CARE Ratings has also ventured into valuation services and offers valuation of equity, debt instruments, and market linked debentures. Moreover, the company has launched a new international credit rating agency ‘ARC Ratings’ by teaming up with four partners from South Africa Brazil, Portugal, and Malaysia. ARC Ratings has commenced operations and completed sovereign ratings of countries, including India.

Credit Rating Information Services of India Limited (CRISIL)

CRISIL is one of the oldest credit rating agencies in India. It was launched in the country in 1987 following which the company went public in 1993. Headquartered in Mumbai, CRISIL ventured into infrastructure rating in 2016 and completed 30 years in 2017. CRISIL acquired 8.9% stake in CARE credit rating agency in 2017. It launched India’s first index to benchmark performance of investments of foreign portfolio investors (FPI) in the fixed-income market, in the rupee as well as dollar version in 2018. The company’s portfolio includes, mutual funds ranking, Unit Linked Insurance Plans (ULIP) rankings, CRISIL coalition index and so on.

Acuite Ratings & Research Limited

Acuité Ratings & Research Limited is a full-service Credit Rating Agency registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The company received RBI Accreditation as an External Credit Assessment Institution (ECAI), for Bank Loan Ratings under BASEL-II norms in the year 2012. Since then, it has assigned more than 8,300 credit ratings to various securities, debt instruments and bank facilities of entities spread across the country and section of industries. It has its Registered and Head Office in BKC, Mumbai.

Brickwork Ratings (BWR)

Brickwork Rating was established in 2007 and is promoted by Canara Bank. It offers ratings for bank loans, SMEs, corporate governance rating, municipal corporation, capital market instrument, and financial institutions. It also grades NGOs, tourism, IPOs, real estate investments, hospitals, IREDA, educational institutions, MFI, and MNRE. Brickwork Ratings is recognised as external credit assessment agency (ECAI) by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to carry out credit ratings in India.

ICRA Limited

ICRA Limited is a public limited company that was set up in 1991 in Gurugram. The company was formerly known as Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India Limited. Before going public in April 2007, ICRA was a joint venture between Moody’s and several Indian financial and banking service organisations. The ICRA Group currently has four subsidiaries – Consulting and Analytics, Data Services and KPO, ICRA Lanka and ICRA Nepal. At present, Moody’s Investors Service, the international Credit Rating Agency, is ICRA’s largest shareholder. ICRA’s product portfolio includes rating for corporate debt, financial rating, structured finance, infrastructure, insurance, mutual funds, project and public finance, SME, market linked debentures and so on.

Limitations of Rating

Biased rating and misrepresentations:

In the absence of quality rating, credit rating is a curse for the capital market industry, carrying out detailed analysis of the company, should have no links with the company or the persons interested in the company so that the reports impartial and judicious recommendations for rating committee.

Concealment of material information:

Rating Company might conceal material information from the investigating team of the credit rating company. In such cases quality of rating suffers and renders the rating unreliable.

Human bias:

Finding off the investigation team, at times, may suffer with human bias for unavoidable personal weakness of the staff and might affect the rating.

Down grade:

Once a company has been rated and if it is not able to maintain its working results and performance, credit rating agencies would review the grade and down grade the rating resulting into impairiring the image of the company.

Reflection of temporary adverse conditions:

Time factor affects’ rating, sometimes, misleading conclusions are derived. For example, company in a particular industry might be temporarily in adverse condition but it is given a low rating. This adversely affects the company’s interest.

Rating is no guarantee for soundness of company:

Rating is done for a particular instrument to assess the credit risk but it should not be construed as a certificate for the matching quality of the company or its management. Independent views should be formed by the user public in general of the rating symbol.

Static study:

Rating is done on the present and the past historic data of the company and this is only a static study. Prediction of the company’s health through rating is momentary and anything can happen after assignment of rating symbols to the company.

Dependence for future results on the rating, therefore defeats the very purpose of risk indicativeness of rating. Many changes take place in economic environment, political situation, government policy framework which directly affect the working of a company.