At RAM Ratings, we understand that in activities such as raising capital, funding and investment, every decision – however minute - can ultimately translate into considerable savings or towering costs, financial gains or losses. This drives our aim of helping your organisation secure independent, in-depth and timely credit analysis that will give you critical insights into your potential investments.
We are firmly committed to providing quality credit assessments - to enable you to successfully tap the capital market and to aid in your decision-making process. As one of the region’s most experienced rating agencies and with a diverse portfolio, we are able to capitalise on our understanding of the market when making credit evaluations.
Our clients consist of public listed companies, small and mid-sized organisations, financial institutions, large-scale enterprises and conglomerates, government-linked corporations and multinationals. These cover a multitude of sectors, and many of them have accessed the debt market more than once.
Our Specialised Areas
Corporate Ratings
Corporate ratings are ratings assigned to corporations/issuers or debt issues. Depending on the requirement, it can take the form of a Corporate Credit Rating (“CCR”), or an issue- or debt-specific rating.
These ratings reflect RAM Ratings’ current opinion on the relative risks of each corporation's debt issue with regard to full and timely payment of interest and principal - the key to all informed investment decisions.
RAM Ratings’ corporate ratings encompass issuers from a broad range of industries that typically fall under the following specialised groups:
(i) Consumer products and services
(ii) Industrial products, oil and gas, and services
(iii) Construction, engineering, real estate and plantations
Project Finance Ratings
Project finance is a method used to fund long-term, infrastructure-related endeavours such as tolled roads, independent power producers and water concessionaires. A project-finance transaction involves the funding of an undertaking via a combination of debt and equity, which will be ultimately repaid via the cashflow generated by that particular project over the longer term. Debts issued under project-finance transactions typically have tenures of 10 years or more.
RAM Ratings’ analysis of project-finance transactions includes, where applicable, an assessment of construction risk, contractual risk, operations risk, counterparty risk, and funding structure. Of these, funding structure is deemed one of the more critical factors– inbuilt covenants provide additional protection to lenders. As such, project finance ratings are generally issue-specific.
Structured Finance Ratings
Structured finance describes a sector of finance created to help transfer risks via separate legal entities. Qualities typical of structured-finance transactions include the pooling of assets and the issuance of debt to fund the purchase of these assets from an originator. In this context, a bankruptcy-remote, special-purpose vehicle (“SPV”) is typically created to detach the credit risks of the pool of collateral from the credit risks of the originator.
Structured-finance transactions enable the conversion of assets, which cannot otherwise be traded in their existing forms, into instruments that may be offered and traded freely in the capital markets. The bankruptcy-remoteness of the SPV or issuer allows the investor to take on the credit risks of the asset, without taking on the specific credit risks of the originator.
Sukuk Ratings
Debt instruments issued according to Islamic financing principles (also known as sukuk) are structured in such a manner that the issuance is not an exchange of bond certificates for money or interest, as is the case with conventional bonds. Instead, they are based on the exchange of Shariah-approved assets for some financial consideration, which allows investors to earn profits from the transaction. The various types of Islamic-based structures used for the creation of Islamic bonds include the sale and purchase of an asset based on deferred payment, leasing of specific assets or participation in joint-venture businesses.
Financial Institution and Insurer Ratings
Ratings of financial institutions encompass conventional and Islamic financial organisations as well as non-bank financial institutions (or related entities), both domestic and international. Financial institution ratings are essentially counterparty ratings.
Our rating experience in this sphere includes commercial banks, investment banks, development financial institutions, stockbroking companies (or securities firms), mono-line credit-card companies, leasing/factoring companies, holding companies of financial-services-related concerns, and insurance companies (on their claims-paying ability).
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