Credit Monitor, Illustrated with a Bank Portfolio

THE CLIENTS: Investment Management, Investment Banking, Commercial Banking, Non-Financial Corporations, Private Equity

THE USERS: Credit Analysts, Credit Risk Managers and Officers, Investment Analysts, Loan Officers, Fund Managers

Pain Points

As banks become more interconnected through interbank lending, monitoring their credit health—both among peers and larger systemic banks regionally and globally—becomes crucial for early warning of credit risk deterioration. Clients seek to improve their experience navigating web interfaces for triaging credit risk by simplifying page and alert management. With increasing market complexities, a streamlined approach is essential. Integrating RatingsDirect^® with key credit risk data can enhance monitoring efficiency and enable quick assessments of exposures and emerging risks.

What is Credit Monitor?

Credit Monitor on RatingsDirect^® is a powerful tool that streamlines credit risk monitoring by consolidating key insights into a central, customizable credit hub. It enables users to track companies, securities, and counterparties efficiently—by sector, region, or custom lists—without having to navigate multiple webpages.

With integrated data from credit ratings, market indicators, news, and research, Credit Monitor provides a real-time view of credit risk exposure. Its proactive alert system ensures users stay ahead of potential risks, allowing them to "set it and forget it" while receiving timely prompts on significant credit movements. By aggregating critical risk indicators in one place, Credit Monitor saves time and enhances decision-making with actionable insights.

The Solution Overview

The tool integrates list management with a top ribbon displaying entity and security counts, average rating, and a three-month rating trend. It highlights rating transitions, CreditWatch/Outlook distributions, and includes a Sectors Workflow for efficient sector-specific monitoring. Users can further filter “My Lists” by sector and geography, and “Sectors” by geography, to drill down and analyze more effectively.

In this case study, we will use a sample portfolio of banks rated by S&P Global Ratings for illustration, which can be used to monitor interbank lending counterparties.

Starting with the Overview page, users can see that there have been 16 upgrades vs. 2 downgrades over the past three months, with 58 outlook positive vs. 42 outlook negative. Clicking into the red portion of the Entity CreditWatch/Outlook Distribution chart displays the list of banks with negative outlooks, and users can click into the entity names to bring up the bank profile.

The Latest Updates section shows recent research and rating actions, with filters for specific time periods and scheduled alerts. Users can click an entity on the left to view its research on the same page without navigating to a separate tab.

Users subscribed to CIQ Pro can access the latest transcripts, reports, and filings while tracking key events and developments for entities in their list.

The Biggest Movers & Benchmarks section shows Credit Default Swaps, S&P Market Derived Signals, and fixed income benchmark movements for credits in users’ portfolios. For example, in the chart below, you can see that one of the banks' CDS spreads narrowed by 58.34 bps over the past seven days, with an MDSCDS of “b” compared to its credit rating of “B-”.

The Entity View lets users take a closer look at this bank, showing credit ratings information. Users with subscriptions can see ratings from other agencies and navigate to the profile page.

In the Security View, the Pricing section now integrates data from S&P Global Market Intelligence (IHS Markit), providing data such as amount outstanding, bid price, YTM, and benchmarks.

Separately, users can also monitor corporate borrowers or peers within the same country, region, or industry. Here is an example of the Real Estate sector within Developed Europe, drilled down directly within the Credit Monitor tool using the Sectors filter and the Country/Region column, offering similar functionality to that of banks.

Users can conveniently benchmark these entities vs. their global industries within the Fundamentals Section in the Entity View. The credit adjusted ratios are enhanced with color-coded quartiles, flagging entities that fall below or exceed Capital IQ peers. 

Users looking for potential rating action signals can look at Outlook Financial Thresholds, extracted from research reports. They can proactively compare recent financial performance against these thresholds, with article blurbs offering quick insights without navigating full reports.

Key Benefits:

• Ease of use with integrated list management and the ability to easily set up alerts
• Draw insights from summarizations and visualizations across your portfolio or list
• Stay on top of the latest updates across multiple content sets, and drill down to customizable detailed entity and bond views
• Consolidate key data such as:
  • Research & Ratings from S&P Global Ratings
  • Ratings from Moody’s and Fitch
  • CreditStats Direct®
  • Market-Derived Signals
  • Fixed income and CDS pricing

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