The Banque de France launched at the beginning of the week a new, more refined, rating scale for companies, which they use to prove their financial and economic solidity to credit establishments.
The French central bank values each year some 300,000 companies generating more than 750,000 euros in turnover.
The new scale has 22 levels instead of 13, in particular in order to limit threshold effects and to be closer to what is done in countries neighboring France.
Loans from companies that achieve top ten ratings under the new system allow banks to use them as collateral (or collateral) to obtain refinancing from the European Central Bank, as well as to assess their fund ratio. own according to their credit risk.
These notes are finally used to assess the potential losses for the State of the EMPs (loans guaranteed by the State) that it has granted since the crisis, explained AFP Alain Gerbier, director of companies at the Banque de France.
Among companies with an average credit rating, the Banque de France picked up around 1,600, which since the start of the crisis have experienced both an increase in indebtedness and a decline in cash flow, in order to alert the Departmental Committees of ‘examination of the financing problems of companies (Codefi).
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The idea is to find a solution if there are difficulties and to maintain the quotation or to raise it, not to lower it, according to Mr. Gerbier, who specifies that there was no movement of degradation in 2020 nor in 2021.
Finally, the Banque de France rating takes into account extra-financial criteria, such as the carbon intensity of the company’s activity and its degree of preparation for the climate transition.
A thousand analysts work at the French central bank to assess companies and assign them a rating per year, or even more often in the event of an event such as an increase in debt or bankruptcy.