Sector Coverage

Credit analysis conducted for our Financial Institutions sector provides insightful and comprehensive ratings on more than 3,500 banks and 120 covered bonds around the world. We provide actionable ratings on finance, leasing, rental and business development companies, unsecured bank facilities, long-term debt obligations and preferred stock of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Our coverage of the Financial Institutions sector is completed through analysis into a wide range of global securities firms and asset managers, including hedge funds and investment firms.

• Banks
• Covered Bonds
• Finance & Leasing
• Securities Firms
• Fund & Asset Manager Ratings
• REITs

Fitch Ratings is committed to bringing our legacy of transparency and openness to bear in all areas of the structured finance market. We have developed new investor-focused surveillance tools and enhanced our existing offerings to ensure that a security’s risk is clearly identified and that our opinions continue to be objective and forward-looking. In the complex field of global securitization, Fitch Ratings explores every angle of a transaction so that investors have the additional insight and context necessary to make timely and informed business decisions.

• ABCP
• ABS
• CMBS
• RMBS
• Structured Credit
• Operational Risk Group
• Covered Bonds

Fitch Ratings' sovereign team is dedicated to providing timely and objective ratings and insightful research on the foreign and local debt issuance of over 100 countries. Our sovereign analysts combine a global perspective with an in-depth knowledge of the latest political, regional and economic developments affecting a country to help investors assess sovereign debt opportunities with confidence. Working in collaboration with other Fitch Ratings analytical teams, we enable market participants to assess their risk exposure to emerging market bank, corporate and structured finance transactions.

• Sovereigns
• Supranationals

At Fitch Ratings, our corporate analysts proactively cover institutions and their debt instruments across a wide range of global corporate sectors - from aerospace and defense, to retail and consumer products, to power and natural gas. Each analyst in our corporate finance network is focused on a defined set of issuers so that they can explore every angle of an entity and offer actionable credit opinions and insightful commentary. Our deep expertise and sector knowledge provide investors with a consistent approach to confidently measure risk across the corporate credit spectrum, including international high yield bonds and leveraged loans.

• Corporates
• Global Power
• Leveraged Finance

With coverage across all areas of the +insurance+ market including life, property & casualty, and reinsurance, our experienced analysts apply an open and balanced approach to credit assessment. Leveraging comprehensive data and well-tested credit metrics, our analytical process is supported by a careful mix of quantitative and qualitative factors. Our insurance team transforms data into actionable opinions that help investors confidently evaluate risk.

• Insurance

Fitch Ratings creates value beyond the rating by bringing perspective to the evolving U.S. public finance sector. Nearly 90% of the world’s largest institutional investors routinely turn to Fitch Ratings for in-depth analysis, comprehensive presale research and easily-understood guidelines on state and local governments, public housing, higher education, health care, public power and public transportation bonds. On the global front, Fitch Ratings’ International Public Finance team covers the foreign and local currency debt of subnational governments and other public sector entities. Our comprehensive credit analysis approach is based on an assessment of the relationship between different tiers of government, the balance between economic and financial criteria, and objective and qualitative factors, providing investors with local market perspective in a global marketplace.

• International Public Finance
• U.S. Public Finance

Fitch Ratings provides credit opinions on a variety of infrastructure and project finance transactions on a global basis. With an analytical presence on five continents, our analysts work collaboratively across the organization to provide investors a globally consistent, yet regionally focused perspective. It’s that local expertise combined with our comprehensive world view that enables investors to make informed credit assessments about a variety of debt instruments in the transportation, energy, water and social infrastructure sectors.

• Global Infrastructure & Project Finance

Fitch Ratings Credit Market Research provides market participants with data and analysis on default and recovery rates and broad credit trends in the fixed income markets. The Credit Market Research team created and maintains two widely used par-based default indices for the U.S. and European high yield bond markets. The default series include industry specific default and recovery rates. For the U.S. market, the statistics date back to 1980. Credit Market Research also conducts studies on the performance of corporate and structured debt products rated by Fitch Ratings, including current and historical default rates by rating category and rating transition analyses. The group also publishes data on global bond issuance and upgrade/downgrade ratios for all obligors rated by Fitch Ratings.

• Credit Market Research