Are There Differences Between Solicited and Unsolicited Bank Credit Ratings?

• Main Authors: 張原榮, Justin Chang
• Language: 英文
• Published: 國立政治大學
• Subjects: 信用評等; bank credit rating; unsolicited ratings; ordered probit
• Online Access: http://thesis.lib.nccu.edu.tw/cgi-bin/cdrfb3/gsweb.cgi?o=dstdcdr&i=sid=%22G0923570161%22.

The three big credit rating agencies released their unsolicited ratings since 1996 and all of these unsolicited ratings are given to banks in Asia, especially in the emerging markets. This study aims to test whether there are differences between solicited and unsolicited bank ratings. We compare the financial profiles of solicited and unsolicited banks and investigate the factors that influence banks’ credit ratings. The empirical results show that unsolicited bank ratings are significantly lower than solicited ratings. It is seen that the financial variables of banks with solicited ratings are also better than those with unsolicited ratings. However, the profitability of banks with solicited ratings is significantly lower than those with unsolicited ratings. We see that listed and commercial banks tend to have lower credit ratings and it could be due to the fact that listed banks may face the volatility of their short-term stock prices, so their operating strategies are influenced by market noise, which leads to inferior performance. The reason why commercial banks tend to have lower credit ratings is that commercial banks face so fierce competition that their profitability is compressed. In the last section, we use an ordered probit model to examine the determinants of Fitch’s rating. We find that sovereign credit risk, solicited status, listed status, bank specialization, profitability and asset quality are the major factors influencing Fitch’s bank credit ratings.