The world of the credit rating agencies is ripe for an upgrade!

This article was originally published on 25 November 2015 on Linkedin.

Sovereign risk ratings influence the pricing of trillions of dollars of government debt and determine how much a country pays to borrow on capital markets. These potent rankings have long been dominated by the big three credit rating agencies, S&P, Moody’s and Fitch.

Until now, that is.

Despite sleepwalking into the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing EU sovereign credit crisis, the incumbents are still doing business as usual. Too often, the rating agencies have acted late and not impartial. Economists, professional sovereign risk analysts, and investment managers need an alternative and they have been compelled to assess sovereign credit risk themselves. International regulatory bodies also have acknowledged the shortcomings of the rating agencies and released new rules and guidance aimed at reducing the reliance of financial market participants on rating agencies. However, it remains to be seen if regulatory bodies will follow through on their good intentions.

CountryRisk.io’s ambition is to empower economists, risk and investment managers and academics to improve the quality of sovereign risk ratings. CountryRisk.io provides a user-friendly web-based sovereign risk assessment platform that is freely accessible to everyone. CountryRisk.io’s comprehensive risk assessment framework is transparent and independent.

But more than a robust, nuanced rating tool, CountryRisk.io is a community. It connects sovereign risk analysts worldwide, enabling them to challenge, learn from and exchange ideas with their peers. As a web-based platform, CountryRisk.io gives users a fundamental, bottom-up, consensus risk rating view for each sovereign. We think this crowd-sourced view is more reliable than that of any single analyst or small team at a rating agency.

CountryRisk.io also makes country risk analysis a lot easier. The web-based platform is easy to look at and use. Excel squinting is over. Users have access to full datasets for over 160 countries, derived from World Bank and IMF data. Users can also upload their own datasets and estimates if they wish.

CountryRisk.io takes sovereign risk ratings out of the dark and transforms them into a public good. It’s time.