Know the Risks and ‘See’ the Future with the Integrity and Transparency of Moody’s Local

The Moody’s name and brand is internationally famous — and the agency’s Latin American platform brings local knowledge to the fore.

Latin American domestic credit ratings and research agency Moody’s Local serves the needs of financial markets in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Uruguay.

Moody’s Local (ML) provides ratings and local-language research using country-specific methodologies. It’s a platform of Moody’s Corporation (MCO), with processes independent from those of global credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service.

In 2019, MCO deepened its commitment to Latin America’s financial markets by introducing Moody’s Local in Peru, Panama and Bolivia. In September 2020, it extended its services to Argentina and Uruguay, and in June 2021 it launched in Brazil. The arrival of Moody’s Local Mexico was announced this May, completing the roll-out of the domestic ratings platform in major Latin American markets.

“Moody’s Local strives to offer the highest level of integrity, transparency and consistency,” said Martin Fernandez-Romero, ML managing director and regional head of Latin America. Market participants rely on ML for local opinions — and particularly value the experience of its analysts, “which leads to informed credit decision-making”.

“Moody’s Local strives to offer the highest level of integrity, transparency and consistency which leads to informed credit decision-making.”

Martin Fernandez-Romero

Moody’s Local has seen tremendous growth in Latin America, with more than 990 issuers covered — sectors include structured finance, local government, financial institutions, insurance companies, and corporate entities — and over 300 published pieces of research. Ninety employees have been brought in across the region.

A Moody’s Local rating is an opinion on the relative credit quality of debt obligations, or of an issuer’s ability to honour those obligations, for use in a domestic market. The long- and short-term rating scales are forward-looking opinions of the relative credit risks of financial obligations issued by non-financial corporates, financial institutions, structured finance vehicles, project finance vehicles, and public sector entities.
They are not buy-or-sell recommendations, nor do they guarantee that a particular issuer or instrument will not default.

Credit risk is the possibility that an entity may not meet its contractual financial obligations as they come due. Moody’s Local’s rating system addresses that eventuality by assessing the issuer’s ability to obtain sufficient funds to service the obligation, and its willingness to pay.

ML ratings represent a rank-ordering of creditworthiness within the domestic market of a specific country, and are not comparable among countries. Ratings are forward-looking: the ordering is designed to be maintained over the medium term. An ML rating is an opinion on the relative credit risk of a debt obligation and the ability to honour it. The company reasserts that a rating is not a statement as to which obligors or obligations will default.

The scale runs from a high of AAA to a low of C or D, depending on the jurisdiction. The rating modifier “.n” designates the country where the Moody’s Local rating has been assigned: AAA.ar (Argentina), AAA.bo (Bolivia), AAA.br (Brazil), AAA.mx (Mexico), AAA.pa (Panama), AAA.pe (Peru), and AAA.uy (Uruguay).

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