AM Best Releases Revised Criteria Procedure: ‘Best’s National Scale Ratings’

OLDWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AM Best has released its revised criteria procedure, “Best’s National Scale Ratings” (NSR), which is effective immediately.

AM Best published its request for comment related to NSR criteria procedure on February 28, 2023, with the comment period closing on March 28, 2023.

The revisions to the criteria procedure, formerly known as “AM Best’s Ratings on a National Scale,” include the introduction of NSRs for five countries: Egypt, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. These new NSRs will allow greater differentiation among insurance participants in their respective markets. The mappings of the new tables from the global Issuer Credit Rating (ICR) to the NSR are included in the updated rating criteria. To denote the difference between a global ICR and an NSR, the NSR will have an “.XX” where XX represents a two-letter country code.

The NSR is a relative opinion of an insurance company’s financial strength within a single country. NSRs are constructed based on the financial characteristics of (re)insurers that are domiciled in the country, and to an extent, mitigate country-specific limiting factors in the global rating analysis.

In the final version of the revised criteria procedure, AM Best has provided greater clarity on the nine factors used to determine the market characteristics for the NSR mapping. Additional language has been included to accommodate different reporting standards across jurisdictions that may lead to the use of other financial metrics and definitions. Furthermore, where the criteria procedure explains the circumstances when an NSR can change, a third factor has been included to acknowledge that a change in the rating committee’s assessment of the NSR can occur, where a global ICR may correspond to more than one NSR.

The revisions to the NSR criteria do not impact any published credit ratings.

AM Best received seven comments related to the NSRs during the public consultation period through the methodology in-box. AM Best would like to thank all the respondents who participated in the consultation period. A summary of the ‘Response to Comment’ document that addresses key themes and questions is published here: https://web.ambest.com/ratings-services/rating-methodologies/methodology-comments.

This criteria procedure is available at http://www.ambest.com/ratings/methodology.asp.

A video discussion on this subject with Graziano Brady, senior economist, Credit Rating Criteria, Research and Analytics, AM Best, is available at http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=ambfinalnsrcriteria523.

AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

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