Operational performance of credit rating agencies: A comparative analysis

Credit rating is the symbolic indicator of the current opinion of rating agencies regarding the relative capability of issuer of debt instrument, to service the debt obligations as per contract. Credit rating is done by credit rating agencies but now a days these credit rating agencies are not only involved in the rating activities but also they are engaged in multiplicity of operations. Thus the main objective of the paper is to make the comparative analysis of various operations of four Credit Rating Agencies in India. For this purpose, the operations of various agencies are compared on different dimensions including activities undertaken, instruments and products rated, methodology adopted, rating symbols used, rating process adopted. It is found that all the agencies are engaged in similar types of operations with the minute differences in them.