Morningstar will begin offering credit rating data from Fitch Ratings, the third-largest credit rating firm in the U.S.
The data will be offered through Fitch Solutions, the distribution channel of Fitch Ratings, and be available to institutional clients as part of the online data tools and analytics which Morningstar provides its clients. Both Fitch Ratings and Fitch Solutions are units of the Fitch Group, a jointly-owned subsidiary of Fimalac, S.A., a financial service and real estate holding company based in Paris, and the Hearst Corp., a privately owned U.S. media giant.
Fitch's credit rating data will cover all of the agency's rated global sectors, issuers and securities and will include credit ratings, watches and outlooks, as well as up to 35 years of historical rating actions spanning 9,800 issuers and 1.1 million issues.
The Fitch data specifically will feature Corporate Finance package that includes all Fitch issuer and issue ratings for banks, financial institutions, corporations, insurance companies, sovereigns, and non-U.S. public finance entities; and a Structured Finance package that includes all Fitch issuer and issue ratings for asset-backed securities, mortgage-backed securities, CBOs/CLOs, loan products and managed funds.
“Under the new arrangement, Morningstar institutional clients can specifically ask to be supplied with a particular set of data in a feed or with a particular set of data tools in an online or web-based solution,” said Tina Gould, a Morningstar spokeswoman.
Chicago-based Morningstar provides in-depth information on more than 385,000 investment offerings along with independent fund and equity analysis produced by its team of approximately 260 analysts worldwide. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its registered investment advisor subsidiaries and has more than $186 billion in assets under advisement or management as of June 30.
