Credit rating agencies in Russia

History

2024: Russia's largest credit rating agencies

Credit rating agencies (KRA) are one of the key institutions that provide market participants with information about the creditworthiness and financial reliability of companies. As of the end of 2024, agencies use 70 rating methodologies. In total, 2,434 credit ratings were assigned against 2,326 in 2023. This is stated in the review of the Bank of Russia, published on April 11, 2025.

The ratings of Russian KRAs cover 207 operating credit institutions (59% of the banking market), which accounts for 97% of the sector's assets, as well as 72 insurance entities (65% of the insurers' market). Given the growing need for credit ratings in 2023-2024, the volume of the rating services market steadily increased, and the average annual growth was 4%.

In terms of the number of credit ratings of issues, ACRA leads with an indicator of 709 of the total number of 1251 units as of December 31, 2024. This is followed by Expert RA with 497 units. In terms of the number of credit ratings of the rated persons, Expert RA ranks first with 537 of the total number (1183), followed by ACRA with an indicator of 405.

According to the Central Bank, the two largest KRAs account for a total of 88.2% of the assigned (current) credit ratings. At the same time, the share of small KRAs in the structure of the industry is gradually growing, mainly due to an increase in the assigned credit ratings to non-financial organizations. The share of small KRAs by the number of assigned credit ratings at the end of 2024 amounted to 11.8%, a year earlier - 9.4%.

The demand for credit ratings is formed by rated persons with different levels of creditworthiness of various sectors of the economy. Traditionally, the largest share of all KRA ratings assigned - 70% at the end of 2024 - falls on the upper part of the rating scale: levels from "BBB" to "AAA" on the national rating scale for the Russian Federation.^[1]

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