India
The Supervisor of Credit Rating Agencies in India is the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”). SEBI standardized the rating symbols and their definitions for all credit rating agencies in India in June 2011. The standard foresees the following rating categories: AAA, AA, A, BBB, BB, B, C, D Next to the rating symbol, an abbreviation for each CRA is added.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) grants the recognition of the ECAI status. As the rating scale has been standardized, no mapping of ratings is being done. An RBI directive requires ECAIs to publish their rating fees.
The National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) provides for a specific SME rating framework. It has standardized the rating scale and to a certain extent also the rating methodologies.
In addition, the National Housing Bank list also eligible rating agencies.
Based on our research, we have identified the following agencies in India (in alphabetic order):
- Acuite Ratings & Research Limited (formerly ONICRA) Main website Regulatory disclosures
- Brickwork Ratings India Private Limited
- Care Ratings Limited
- CRISIL Limited
- ICRA Limited
- India Ratings and Research PVT Limited (formerly Fitch Ratings India PVT. Limited)
- Infomerics Valuation and Ratings
The list of Credit Rating Agencies registered with SEBI are available following this link.
Disclosures by CRAs
CRAs are mandated to disclose a wide range of issues covering a.o. the following topics:
- Half year summary rating activity report
- History of credit ratings of all outstanding securities
- Long-run and short-run average default rates
- Average one year transition rates for long-term ratings for the last 5 financial years
- Income disclosure
- Policy on unsolicited credit ratings
- Fee schedules for bank loan ratings
- Rating methodologies
- List of unaccepted ratings
- List of delayed rating reviews
All CRAs maintain specific regulatory disclosure pages, links being provided above.
Default benchmark and indicative mapping to global scales
In accordance with the SEBI guidelines for Enhanced Disclosures by Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) dated June 13, 2019 (Ref: SEBI/HO/MIRSD/P/2019/70), CRAs in consultation with SEBI has prepared standardized and uniform Probability of Default (PD) benchmarks for each rating category. These benchmarks are for one year, two year and three year Cumulative Default Rates (CDRs) both for short run and long run. The benchmarks have been prepared following the Marginal Default Rate (MDR) approach using monthly static pool for the last 10 year period. The long run benchmarks are computed based on a confidence interval of 95.0% over the weighted average default rates and making adjustments to achieve ordinality, as necessary. The short run benchmarks are similarly computed based on a confidence interval of 99.7% over the weighted average default rates and making adjustments to achieve ordinality, if required.
We have opted to analyze the 3 year CDRs as this is the standard used in Europe by the European Banking Authority (and the other European Supervisory Authorities) to derive the mappings of credit ratings to regulatory credit quality steps. Based on the European standards and using the long-run defaults rates, we derive the following correspondence between Indian and International credit ratings:
When using the short-run default rates, the Indian BBB rating category maps into CQS 5 (or B category) only.
When comparing the risk weights for Corporate debt for Indian Corporates in Indian with the risk weights used under the Basel III framework for international corporate exposure, we note that the above mapping fits pretty well as the same risk weights would be applied.
Based on the European Ratingplatform maintained by ESMA, we note that all ESMA registered or certified CRAs (S&P, Fitch, Moodys, JCRA, EIU) reporting ratings to ERP currently rate India in CQS 3 (or BBB category). Given that CRAs may use the concept of sovereign ceiling, an Indian AAA would only map into Credit quality step 3. Additionally, since India current ratings are on the lower end of CQS 3, we assume that Indian AA ratings would equally see their ratings on an international scale in the BB region.