Credit data provider: Moody’s Analytics

 

In today’s volatile markets, companies of all sizes need access to a broad range of accurate credit data and analysis tools. Moody’s Analytics has one of the most comprehensive suites of credit data available, covering a huge range of industry sectors and accompanied by cutting-edge tools and actionable analytics. Its products include proprietary risk datasets for analysing markets where data is thin, early-warning analysis, and tools for stress-testing, modelling and benchmarking.

The firm is constantly reacting to changing market dynamics, launching numerous enhancements and making several strategic acquisitions in the past 12 months. It now offers credit products designed to help clients navigate Covid-19, the conflict in Ukraine, the UK energy crisis, climate risk, and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, for example. It has also invested in intelligent solutions, launching NewsEdge Credit, which combines business-relevant news with credit risk expertise to flag up adverse credit events, and CreditLens CRE, which embeds market data side by side with cashflow and risk rating activities.

Central to Moody’s credit data products is Data Alliance, which covers more than 114 million commercial and industrial private firm financial statements, $588 billion in commercial real estate (CRE) loans and more than 68% of all project finance loans originated since 1983. It also includes asset finance and agriculture data. From here, Moody’s Analytics derives data products for accounting standards, stress-testing, internal and regulatory credit models, and loan origination models. It also provides tools for visualising and benchmarking. Data Alliance provides insight into normally opaque private markets, which can then augment portfolio data. In the past 12 months, Moody’s Analytics has grown its CRE consortia in Europe and expanded its benchmarking tools. Moody’s Analytics CRE also provides a database of validated and curated information on 6.5 million commercial properties in the US.   

CreditEdge is a cloud-based product for managing the credit risk of listed companies and bonds globally. Its flagship metric is the Expected Default Frequency (EDF), a forward-looking probability of default (PD) measure produced daily for more than 42,000 public firms. It combines financial statements and equity market information to generate a predictive measurement of standalone credit risk. The EDF model is backed by the firm’s proprietary database of more than 16,000 defaults globally. CreditEdge includes ‘what-if’ scenario analysis and a ‘smart’ news feed that uses artificial intelligence to uncover news events that could affect a firm’s credit risk. Customers can also rank public and private exposures together, using the Early Warning Score to spot emerging risks and opportunities across their portfolios sooner.

Moody’s Analytics has made numerous enhancements recently, including the launch of EDF-X application programming interface, which provides pre-scored and continuously updated PD metrics for upwards of 425 million companies globally. It also launched a climate-adjusted version of the public firm EDF model.

Another standout product is Orbis, which allows clients to understand shareholder power by identifying corporate ownership structures and assessing the financial health of holding companies, subsidiaries and corporate groups. It contains information on more than 425 million entities worldwide – a figure that has grown 44% in four years – and provides standardised financials, ratios and other data to enable clients to search and compare companies globally. Orbis also offers ESG scores for over 300 million entities.

The judges said:

• “Moody’s Analytics can’t be beaten on the range and quality of its credit data coverage.”
• “Being a market leader in credit data provision, one might expect Moody’s Analytics to rest on its laurels, but there is no evidence of that, given the impressive list of enhancements and new products it has launched recently.”

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