Eacra Activities

Cerved Group is a leader in Italy in the sector of business information and in the development of credit risk assessment models providing support for companies and financial institutions. It serves over 30,000 clients distributed throughout Italy. The credit rating activity involves the issue of unsolicited ratings on non-financial companies. The ratings are produced both for regulatory purposes, upon the request of banks, and for the assessment of commercial counterparts upon the request of non-financial clients.

  As a follow-up on the new US Financial legislation, the US Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve System and the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporate have issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Regarding Alternatives to the Use of Credit Ratings Agencies in the Risk-Based Capital Guidelines of the Federal Banking Agencies. Please find below the response from our association:

The "Friedrich Naumann Stiftung für die Freiheit" organized a workshop near Cologne on "Europäische Ratingagentur: was hat der Mittelstand davon?"(freely translated: "European Rating Agency: what are the benefits to the German Mittelstand?").

The workshop gathered nearly all German players in the rating market (11 companies have requested registration as Credit Rating Agencies in Germany), politicians, academcis, rating advisors in order to discuss the many aspects relating to Credit Rating Agencies.

More information is available in the Member's section.

The OECD Financial Roundtable (which gathers representatives of Central Banks and Ministries of Finance), held on October 7th in Paris, discussed with market participants "Sovereign Debt Challlgenges for Banking Systems and Bond Markets".

This high-level discussion was organized around three sections: The first related to "Current outlook and risks, capital flows and global rebalancing", the second section dealt with "Sovereign risks: measurement, rating and policy responses" and the last with the "Challenges for the banking sector".

On Friday October 1st, 2010, the informal Council on Economic and Financial Affairs (ECOFIN) discussed Credit Rating Agencies. Next to S&P, Moody’s and FitchRatings, EACRA was invited. Each had a 5 minutes slot to present their views on the on-going legislative measures in the field of CRAs.

For more information, please refer to our Members section.

  In July, CESR launched a public consultation with respect a Pan-European Access to Financial Information disclosed by Stock Listed Companies. Currently, stock listed companies report information only at national level and no European access to the information is avalailable. Please find below the answer from our Association

CRIF is a global company that, in addition to the traditional services of information and scoring, started last year a professional activity aimed to issue unsolicited ratings to Italian companies.

Founded in 1988 in Bologna, Italy, CRIF is currently the market leader in continental Europe in the field of banking credit information and one of the main international players for business & commercial information and scoring & decision support services.