Moody’s Investors Service has begun offering private ratings of infrastructure and project finance debt.
The rating agency announced today that it is launching a new rating service that has been requested by investors, Private Rating for Investors, which provides institutional investors with an independent view on currently unrated infrastructure and project finance debt.
“We are seeing increasing demand from insurers and pension funds for project and infrastructure investments,” says Angela Stathi, assistant vice president for global product management at Moody’s. “This is driven by persistently low interest rates, regulatory changes, including the upcoming Solvency II regime in Europe, and a growing appetite for long dated assets to match their liabilities.”
At the same time, Moody’s notes that many banks are looking to divest these unrated assets due to changes in the regulatory capital regimes for banks in recent years. Now, Moody’s will provide ratings to investors that may acquire these kinds of unrated bank assets.
Moody’s says that these private ratings, which will be provided solely for investors’ internal use, will follow the same analytical process and monitoring as its published credit ratings.