Fitch

Fitch Group is one of the world’s leading providers of financial and business services, such as independent credit ratings, training and professional development programs, and country and industrial risk analytics, with a focus on emerging markets.

Fitch Group’s history began on December 24, 1913, when John Knowles Fitch founded the Fitch Publishing Company in the US capital, which began to publish financial statistics.

The Fitch Group includes four business units:

1) Fitch Ratings Inc. assigns a credit rating to issuers and their issued debt instruments, as well as performs credit assessment and risk analysis.

Fitch Ratings Inc. publishes various types of ratings. The most common of these are credit ratings. In addition, Fitch assigns other ratings, scores, and other relative opinions on financial or operating conditions. For example, Fitch assigns special ratings to service companies (servicers) for residential and commercial mortgage credit lending, as well as asset management companies and funds.

However, despite the variety of ratings by Fitch Ratings Inc., in accordance with the Cbonds methodology, only data on long-term credit ratings of companies and debt securities on international and national scales are published on Cbonds.

A long-term credit rating by Fitch Ratings Inc. characterizes the issuer’s readiness to service its long-term debts on time and in full. Long-term ratings are divided into two categories: investment and speculative.

The term “investment grade” is also widely used to refer to issuer and debt ratings with relatively high levels of creditworthiness and credit quality; such ratings include ‘BBB-’ and above.

The term “non-investment” or “speculative” generally refers to securities whose issuers are currently able to meet their financial obligations but face considerable uncertainty (related, for example, to the possibility of deterioration of business or financial conditions) that could negatively affect the level of credit risk, such ratings include the level of “BBB-” and below.

However, it is also worth noting that some people prefer to separate the “RD” and “D” levels into a separate third “default” category.

On the Cbonds site, you can view more than 2,500 long-term international ratings in foreign and national currencies assigned by the Fitch Ratings agency.

At the same time, long-term ratings on the national scale of Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Turkey are also published on the Cbonds site. For example, Polish Alior Bank, Turkish Alternatifbank, Ukrainian Metinvest, Kazakh ForteBank, and Russian VTB Bank.

2) Fitch Solutions distributes Fitch’s products and services.

3) BMI Research conducts economic research in the field of country risk, with a focus on emerging markets.