The LSE Directory / Credit rating agencies
Egan-Jones Ratings Company is a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization based in Haverford, Pennsylvania, with an additional office in Manhattan. Its core service is issuing credit ratings, corporate, sovereign, and structured finance, plus credit research and proxy advisory services, to institutional subscribers such as banks, asset managers and insurers. Since 2007 it has held SEC NRSRO recognition (it does not hold NRSRO recognition for asset-backed or government/municipal/foreign-government securities), and it has since added European Securities and Markets Authority certification (2014) and UK Financial Conduct Authority registration (2021). What sets Egan-Jones apart in its category is its business model rather than its methodology: unlike Moody's, S&P and Fitch, which are paid by the issuers whose debt they rate, Egan-Jones is funded by the investors who subscribe to its ratings, a structure it markets as removing the incentive for a rater to please the company it is rating. It has built a particular niche in private credit ratings, providing ratings for private placements and other capital-raising structures used by insurers and other regulated buyers, an area it has positioned itself as a market leader in, including hosting an annual private credit industry conference. The firm was founded in 1995 by Sean Egan and Bruce Jones (Egan had run a predecessor research firm, Red Flag Research, from 1992, then hired Jones, an analyst from Moody's, before the pair issued their first rating under the Egan-Jones name in December 1995). Sean Egan remains chief executive. The company built its reputation on early, contrarian downgrade calls, including WorldCom and Enron ahead of their collapses, and Lehman Brothers, MBIA, IndyMac and New Century during the 2008 financial crisis; it was also the first NRSRO to cut the United States' rating from AAA to AA+, in July 2011. In June 2022 the SEC charged the firm and Sean Egan with violating conflict-of-interest provisions over a 2019 episode in which Egan took part in rating a client while also involved in marketing to that client; Egan-Jones settled, without admitting or denying the findings, paying a $1.7 million penalty plus over $146,000 in disgorgement and interest, with Egan personally paying a $300,000 penalty and being barred from participating in rating determinations. This followed an earlier, separate 2012 to 2013 SEC matter over NRSRO application misstatements that resulted in an 18-month bar from rating government and asset-backed securities. The firm has faced fresh regulatory friction in early 2026. Bermuda's Monetary Authority dropped Egan-Jones from its list of recognized credit ratings providers for insurer solvency purposes, a delisting reported in January 2026, and in March 2026 the SEC published an order questioning whether the firm's "financial and managerial resources" support its ability to "consistently produce credit ratings with integrity," in connection with its pending application to extend its NRSRO recognition to asset-backed and government securities; Egan-Jones' counsel has disputed the characterization as unfair and sought to have the SEC narrow the language. The firm relaunched its corporate website at egan-jones.com in June 2026.
