The LSE Directory / Credit rating agencies
Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) is a global, full-service credit rating agency. It assigns, publishes and surveils credit ratings and research across asset-backed securities, commercial and residential mortgage-backed securities, structured credit, financial institutions, insurance companies, corporates, project finance and infrastructure, public finance and sovereigns, covering 13 sectors in total. Alongside ratings, it operates KBRA Analytics, a separate data and research arm whose subscription products include Credit Intelligence for private-borrower benchmarking, KBRA Direct Lending Deals for private credit news and analysis, KBRA Premium research, a direct ratings feed, KBRA Credit Profile for monthly CMBS surveillance, and KBRA Financial Intelligence for financial-professional data. KBRA was built as a challenger to the long-established Big Three of Moody's, S&P Global and Fitch, and it markets itself on methodology transparency and closer analyst contact with issuers and investors rather than on scale alone. It has built particular depth in commercial mortgage-backed securities and financial institution ratings, and its leadership team is drawn substantially from the buy side, the sell side, and the incumbent rating agencies themselves. In recent years it has pushed into ratings and analytics for private credit and direct lending, competing for business from fund managers and non-bank originators who want independent benchmarking outside the public bond market. The company was founded in 2010 by Jules Kroll, who had earlier built the corporate investigations firm Kroll Inc. and sold it to Marsh & McLennan Companies for $1.9 billion in 2004. Jim Nadler joined as co-founder and president and became CEO in February 2017, when Kroll moved to the chairman role. KBRA is registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization, and its European and UK entities, Kroll Bond Rating Agency Europe Limited and Kroll Bond Rating Agency UK Limited, are registered with ESMA since November 2017 and the FCA since February 2023 respectively. In December 2021, Boston-based private equity firm Parthenon Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in the company. By its own current company disclosures, KBRA employs more than 650 people across seven offices, in New York, Dresher (Pennsylvania), Frederick (Maryland), Chicago, Dublin, London and Tokyo, and has issued more than 96,000 ratings covering over $4.78 trillion of rated issuance since inception. Coverage of the 2021 sale, including the acquirer's own announcement, described KBRA as the largest credit rating agency founded since the 2008 financial crisis. Its more recent public output, including recurring revenue loan metrics dashboards, RMBS and consumer loan ABS indices, and commentary on private credit and CMBS markets, reflects a continued push to grow KBRA Analytics as a subscription research and data business alongside the core ratings franchise.
