Description
Moody's Investors Service 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 financial research on bonds issued by commercial and government entities. Moody's, along with Standard & Poor's and Fitch Group, is considered one of the Big Three credit rating agencies. It is also included in the Fortune 500 list of 2021.
The company ranks the creditworthiness of borrowers using a standardized ratings scale which measures expected investor loss in the event of default. Moody's Investors Service rates debt securities in several bond market segments. These include government, municipal and corporate bonds; managed investments such as money market funds and fixed-income funds; financial institutions including banks and non-bank finance companies; and asset classes in structured finance. In Moody's Investors Service's ratings system, securities are assigned a rating from Aaa to C, with Aaa being the highest quality and C the lowest quality.
Moody's was founded by John Moody in 1909 to produce manuals of statistics related to stocks and bonds and bond ratings. In 1975, the company was identified as a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO) by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Following several decades of ownership by Dun & Bradstreet, Moody's Investors Service became a separate company in 2000. Moody's Corporation was established as a holding company.
Role in capital markets
Together, they are sometimes referred to as the Big Three credit rating agencies. While credit rating agencies are sometimes viewed as interchangeable, Moody's, S&P and Fitch in fact rate bonds differently; for example, S&P and Fitch Ratings measure the probability that a security will default, while Moody's ratings seek to measure the expected losses in the event of a default. All three operate worldwide, maintaining offices on six continents, and rating tens of trillions of dollars in securities. However, only Moody's Corporation is a free-standing company.
Moody's Investors Service and its close competitors play a key role in global capital markets as three supplementary credit analysis provider for banks and other financial institutions in assessing the credit risk of particular securities. This form of third party analysis is particularly useful for smaller and less sophisticated investors, as well as for all investors to use as an external comparison for their own judgments.
Credit rating agencies also play an important role in the laws and regulations of the United States and several other countries, such as those of the European Union. In the United States their credit ratings are used in regulation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs) for a variety of regulatory purposes. Among the effects of regulatory use was to enable lower-rated companies to sell bond debt for the first time; their lower ratings merely distinguished them from higher-rated companies, rather than excluding them altogether, as had been the case. However, another aspect of mechanical use of ratings by regulatory agencies has been to reinforce "pro-cyclical" and "cliff effects" of downgrades. In October 2010, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) created a set of "principles to reduce reliance" on credit rating agencies in the laws, regulations and market practices of G-20 member countries. Since the early 1990s, the SEC has also used NRSRO ratings in measuring the commercial paper held by money market funds.
The SEC has designated seven other firms as NRSROs, including, for example, A. M. Best, which focuses on obligations of insurance companies. Companies with which Moody's competes in specific areas include investment research company Morningstar, Inc. and publishers of financial information for investors such as Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg L.P.
Especially since the early 2000s, Moody's frequently makes its analysts available to journalists, and issues regular public statements on credit conditions. Moody's, like S&P, organizes public seminars to educate first-time securities issuers on the information it uses to analyze debt securities.
Moody's purchased a controlling share in the "climate risk data firm" Four Twenty Seven in 2019.
Moody's credit ratings
According to Moody's, the purpose of its ratings is to "provide investors with a simple system of gradation by which future relative creditworthiness of securities may be gauged". To each of its ratings from Aa through Caa, Moody's appends numerical modifiers 1, 2 and 3; the lower the number, the higher-end the rating. Aaa, Ca and C are not modified this way. As Moody's explains, its ratings are "not to be construed as recommendations", nor are they intended to be a sole basis for investment decisions. In addition, its ratings don't speak to market price, although market conditions may impact credit risk.
