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Bank underwriting

Bank underwriting involves myriad challenges for its practitioners. When assessing the financial risks associated with commercial establishments, lending officers need to confirm legal identities, evaluate financial resources and exposures, determine pricing and terms, set credit limits for both the borrower and its corporate group, monitor credit portfolios, and comply with regulatory obligations. Addressing each of these challenges requires granular data from a source that is up-to-date, complete, and consistent over time.

With so many factors to consider, it’s vital that the data informing these decisions can help you perform your role more efficiently. Data that is delivered in a structured and standardized way allows you to make high-quality lending decisions on a timeline that meets your objectives. Without such solutions, bank underwriting can be time consuming, costly, and fraught with risk.

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How we help

At Moody’s, we can deliver structured and standardized data according to your company’s preferences and mapped to its database. For instance, we can help you standardize and map financial data to your credit assessment methodology.

01
Operational efficiency

Increase your operational efficiency with structured and standardized financial data delivered to you how and where you need it.

02
Real-time insights

Near-real time news and alerts to help you monitor market developments and news about existing and potential clients.

03
Independent ratings and scores

Impartial ratings and scores, including pre-scored and continually updated probability of default measures, to help you make more confident credit decisions.

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Speak to our team today

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Our solutions

01 Financial data

Financial data

To ensure capital is being held in a strong institution, underwriters need access to granular financial data to help inform their decisions. They’ll need globally standardized financials and data that shows any potential solvency risks, like information on past bankruptcies and probability of default.

02 Ownership data

Ownership data

It’s important for underwriters to have a complete view of entity ownership. This will allow underwriters to check for potential insolvencies in the parent company and its subsidiaries and to screen owners for any regulatory or sanction flags.

03 Ratings and scores

Ratings and scores

Underwriters can benefit from access to independent ratings and scores to help them assess the creditworthiness of borrowers.

04 News data

News data

Access to timely news and alerts is important to help underwriters stay abreast of market moves and any rumors on potential mergers, acquisitions, or ownership changes of current and prospective clients. This is in addition to staying on top of any adverse news stories about these institutions and the people that own them that might impact underwriters’ lending decisions.

Financial data

To ensure capital is being held in a strong institution, underwriters need access to granular financial data to help inform their decisions. They’ll need globally standardized financials and data that shows any potential solvency risks, like information on past bankruptcies and probability of default.

Ownership data

It’s important for underwriters to have a complete view of entity ownership. This will allow underwriters to check for potential insolvencies in the parent company and its subsidiaries and to screen owners for any regulatory or sanction flags.

Ratings and scores

Underwriters can benefit from access to independent ratings and scores to help them assess the creditworthiness of borrowers.

News data

Access to timely news and alerts is important to help underwriters stay abreast of market moves and any rumors on potential mergers, acquisitions, or ownership changes of current and prospective clients. This is in addition to staying on top of any adverse news stories about these institutions and the people that own them that might impact underwriters’ lending decisions.

Why Moody's

Bankruptcy, default and recovery data, including over 850,000 debts and over 600,000 bankruptcies
Over 135 million quantitative ratings and scores
Approximately 46,600 banks with detailed, globally standardized financials and ratios linked to source filings
Globally standardized financial statements for over 45 million entities worldwide
Over 1.9 billion ownership links and data on over 402 million people

Related underwriting solutions

01 Gain confidence across the credit cycle

Gain confidence across the credit cycle

Our award-winning Lending Suite consists of standalone but interoperable SaaS solutions designed to help you make confident credit decisions and effectively manage your loan portfolio.

02 BankFocus

BankFocus

BankFocus combines renowned content from Moody’s and Moody’s Ratings. The result is a banking database that you can use to identify, analyze, and monitor bank performance. BankFocus offers you a range of access and analysis options including a contemporary interface and integrated workflow solutions.

03 NewsEdge suite of solutions

NewsEdge suite of solutions

Bringing together real-time news sources, and the best of the business web and social media to empower decision makers. Our proprietary capabilities include a number of patented components which offer our users unique advantages. The NewsEdge technology engine ingests, enriches, and distributes content in sub-seconds assuring the users of our interfaces and feeds fast access to support better decision making.

04 Moody's Pulse

Moody's Pulse

The Moody’s Pulse platform helps credit departments protect their accounts receivable (AR) portfolios from unpredictable businesses, with increased speed and efficiency. Pairing innovative technology with one of the largest databases of B2B credit information in North America, the platform delivers timely insights about customers, including easy to read credit reports, enabling businesses to act before their receivables are at risk.

Gain confidence across the credit cycle

Our award-winning Lending Suite consists of standalone but interoperable SaaS solutions designed to help you make confident credit decisions and effectively manage your loan portfolio.

BankFocus

BankFocus combines renowned content from Moody’s and Moody’s Ratings. The result is a banking database that you can use to identify, analyze, and monitor bank performance. BankFocus offers you a range of access and analysis options including a contemporary interface and integrated workflow solutions.

NewsEdge suite of solutions

Bringing together real-time news sources, and the best of the business web and social media to empower decision makers. Our proprietary capabilities include a number of patented components which offer our users unique advantages. The NewsEdge technology engine ingests, enriches, and distributes content in sub-seconds assuring the users of our interfaces and feeds fast access to support better decision making.

Moody's Pulse

The Moody’s Pulse platform helps credit departments protect their accounts receivable (AR) portfolios from unpredictable businesses, with increased speed and efficiency. Pairing innovative technology with one of the largest databases of B2B credit information in North America, the platform delivers timely insights about customers, including easy to read credit reports, enabling businesses to act before their receivables are at risk.

News and views

article
Moody's
The importance of third-party data in effective bank underwriting

As we move from an era of central banks injecting liquidity into the financial system to one of monetary tightening, the time of “easy money” is quickly giving way to global inflationary pressures and rapidly rising interest rates.

Read more
research
Moody's
Chinese banks: Profitability under pressure but other metrics hold up

We compared three subsets of Chinese banks – the five largest commercial banks, a group of ten joint-stock commercial banks, and a collection of 30 local and regional Chinese banks – for the period spanning from 2020 to the second quarter of 2023.

Download report

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