Interpreting an Issuer’s Not-Rated Credit Status

Summary

The document explains that “not rated” does not have one universal industry meaning. Its interpretation depends on the credit-rating agency or agencies included in the analysis. In common usage, an issuer may be described as not rated when none of the major international agencies considered has assigned it a rating, even if a domestic agency has.

For a dataset tracking one specific agency, the label simply indicates that the issuer lacks a rating from that agency. The answer does not establish whether a missing entry reflects a data problem, a deliberate absence of coverage, or another cause. Researchers should therefore define the agency universe and the treatment of unrated issuers explicitly when analyzing rating histories; the document offers a usage distinction, not a data-validation method.

Key ideas

• “Not rated” has no single agency-independent definition in the document.
• An issuer may lack ratings from major international agencies while holding a rating from a domestic agency.
• In an agency-specific dataset, the label means that the issuer has no rating from that agency.
• The label alone does not establish why a rating is absent.

Tags

# Credit rating of an Issuer


# Credit rating of an Issuer












When analysing historical movements of credit rating, sometime credit rating is put as `Non-rated` or `NR`.

Is there any industry acceptance definition of `Non-rated`? Or is it just non availability of credit rating the cause of which may include Data issue?

Appreciate any insight on this subject.

## Answer by Harsh Sharma (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/70954

There is no industry-accepted definition of "Not-rated". It may depend on which rating agency you are talking about. I have seen bankers generally referring to Moody's, S&P and Fitch, and if none of the agencies rates the issuer, they call it not-rated (the issuer may still be rated by some domestic rating agency).

However, if you are taking into consideration whether the issuer is rated by some particular agency (say Moody's), "Not-rated" would simply mean not-rated by Moody's.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.