Credit Conditions

Our regional and global Credit Conditions Committees—and the research publications we produce—provide financial market participants around the world with an essential resource for identifying and understanding prevailing and potential credit risks.

Credit Market Research

Our credit market research encompasses ratings performance indicators (including upgrades and downgrades, defaults, outlook changes, weakest links, rising stars, and fallen angels) alongside default and issuance forecasts and financing conditions coverage.

Economic Research

Our economists are responsible for developing the macroeconomic forecasts and risk scenarios used by S&P Global Ratings' analysts during the ratings process, as well as leading key cross-sector and cross-divisional research projects.

Emerging Markets

Leveraging our expansive credit coverage, S&P Global Ratings’ research analysts and economists provide authoritative, forward-looking insights on the largest and most relevant emerging markets across the globe.

Sustainability Insights

S&P Global Ratings’ sustainability insights aim at advancing the understanding of sustainability topics related to environment, social and governance.

Private Markets

As investors increasingly allocate capital across the private debt markets, evolving macro and financial conditions may necessitate a need for greater transparency.

What We're Watching

S&P Global Ratings expects additional credit deterioration in 2024, largely at the lower end of the ratings scale. An environment of increasingly rapid change requires financial market participants to adapt their playbooks.

Credit Headwinds

We are back to an environment of higher real interest rates, concluding an era of cheap money that started in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis.

Capital Flows

With the era of easy money over, investors are rebalancing their portfolios to adjust for shifting risks and returns.

Geopolitical Uncertainty

Geopolitical risks have returned to center stage, with the war between Israel and Hamas, the prolonged Russia-Ukraine conflict, and ongoing U.S.-China tensions.

Energy & Climate Resilience

New challenges are also emerging from the necessity to accelerate the world’s transition to a low-carbon economy to limit the potential dramatic consequences of climate change.

Crypto, Cyber, & Tech Disruption

The transformation of global and regional financial systems amid the adoption of new technologies—from generative artificial intelligence to blockchain and beyond—is accelerating an era of growth and discovery while also heightening single-entity and systemic cyber risk, forcing corporate and government entities to adapt their playbooks.

Global Banking Risk Monitor

We are monitoring the credit implications of the ongoing developments within the global banking sector and other potential macro and credit ramifications.

The Future of Banking

Technological disruption leads to new customer expectations, new forms of competition, but also offers new opportunities for banks. All these trends may ultimately impact the credit profile of banking industries across the globe.

Cyber Risk in a New Era

The increasing frequency of cyber attacks and the potential for rapid deterioration in credit profiles after an attack are risk factors that are relevant for our rating assessments.

Leveraged Finance & CLOs Essentials

Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) have performed well since their inception nearly 30 years ago and are a core asset class within Structured Finance, connecting investors around the globe with companies in the leveraged finance and private credit markets.

Climate Finance In Lower-Income Countries

Low- and lower-middle-income countries are most vulnerable and least ready to adapt to climate change—yet receive the least amount of investment to transition their economies and build resilience to physical climate risks.