Korea Credit Rating Agency displays a pop-up window on its online homepage (left) and the pop-up window from NICE Investors Service. /Courtesy of homepage capture

This article was published on June 18, 2025, at 4:20 p.m. on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove site.

The domestic top three credit rating agencies, Korea Credit Rating (Korea Ratings) and NICE Credit Rating (NICE), are attracting attention as they are engaged in a war of nerves over the results of the credit rating agency capability evaluation conducted by the Korea Financial Investment Association.

According to the credit rating industry on the 18th, following the announcement of the capability evaluation results for credit rating agencies for 2025 by the Korea Financial Investment Association on May 29, Korea Ratings and NICE each launched a pop-up window on their respective websites. The next day, on May 30, a pop-up titled 'Key points related to NICE' posted by NICE stated, 'NICE was found to be the best in proactive suggestions, efforts for market communication, and their usefulness, as well as recent improvement efforts.'

NICE further emphasized, 'It was shown that NICE received the highest evaluation from the market regarding whether the credit rating agency actively communicated with the market and provided useful information through issue analysis reports and seminars.'

Korea Ratings also released a pop-up on the 2nd with the title 'Korea Financial Investment Association credit rating agency capability evaluation results: 1st in all sectors,' stating that 'Korea Ratings was selected as the best rating agency in terms of accuracy of credit ratings, stability of credit ratings, and usefulness of predictive indicators according to the first half of 2025 evaluation results by the Korea Financial Investment Association.'

The contentious part was the following sentence. Korea Ratings stated, 'In addition, we ranked first in the survey on efforts for market communication and their usefulness.' This means that both NICE and Korea Ratings are claiming to have ranked first in the so-called efforts for market communication.

A source familiar with the industry said, 'Korea Credit Rating ranked first in all sectors related to credit rating evaluations, but the results were different in a separately conducted survey,' adding, 'As a result, there was a war of nerves to the extent that internal staff requested corrections to the contents.'

Provided by Korea Financial Investment Association

Strictly speaking, neither company's claims are entirely false. First, NICE received the highest score of 3.99 in the survey item 4, 'efforts for market communication and their usefulness.' Korea Ratings received 3.97. However, looking at the overall average score of the survey results, Korea Ratings had 3.98, which is higher than NICE (3.91) and Korea Ratings (3.98). Each company selectively cited only the parts they wanted to emphasize in their notices. This survey was conducted with six items including proactive suggestions and appropriateness of provided information.

The capability evaluation of these credit rating agencies was introduced in 2017 as part of the Financial Services Commission's plan to advance the credit rating market. The three agencies, NICE, Korea Credit Rating, and Korea Ratings, are evaluated annually by the Korea Financial Investment Association, which releases the evaluation results in May. The aim is to strengthen market discipline in light of concerns about the oligopoly of these three agencies. The domestic credit rating market is shared evenly among these three companies, each holding approximately 33%.

The capability evaluation of credit rating agencies consists of quantitative evaluations (50%) and qualitative evaluations (50%) focusing on accuracy of credit ratings, stability of credit ratings, and usefulness of predictive indicators. It involves presenting the results of a review by an evaluation committee composed of external experts, announcing the best credit rating agencies in each institutional sector. Additionally, the Korea Financial Investment Association conducts surveys on major investor concerns.

In fact, there is a debate within the industry regarding the effectiveness of the capability evaluation of credit rating agencies. It was initially started to improve unhealthy business practices such as rating collusion among credit rating agencies, but there are criticisms that it is not achieving its intended effects. Concerns have been raised that as the three companies gradually standardize upwards, forcing rankings may create a scenario where one of them ends up last. The Korea Financial Investment Association seems to be aware of this, as starting this year, the term 'overall first place' has disappeared from official documents and more indirect expressions such as 'the best in sector' and 'relatively high scores' are being used.