Credit Rating Definitions

Bankersalmanac.com receives ratings from the following agencies. To find out what specific ratings mean, click on the agency you are interested in.

• Capital Intelligence ratings offer investors and risk managers timely, impartial and forward looking analysis of credit trends and counterparty credit risk.
• Fitch credit ratings provide an opinion on the relative ability of an entity to meet financial commitments, such as interest, preferred dividends, repayment of principal, insurance claims or counterparty obligations.
• JCR (Japan Credit Ratings) provides rating of long and short term debts, including medium-term note programs and asset-backed securities.
• Moody's ® ratings are opinions of the credit quality of individual obligations or of an issuer's general creditworthiness, without respect to individual debt obligations or other specific securities. Moody's ® is a registered trademark.
• Standard & Poor's credit ratings are current opinions of the creditworthiness of obligors with respect to a specific financial obligation, a specific class of financial obligations or a specific financial program (including ratings on medium term note programs and commercial paper programs).