Moody's Investors Service has launched its unpublished monitored loan rating (UMLR) service in the U.S.
This follows the product's introduction to the Europe Middle East and Africa region iast year. The rating agency has developed this product to respond to the increasing need for access to detailed credit analysis on these loans.
The UMLR is mostly meant to meet the needs of the private firms in the syndicated leveraged loan market. It can be likened to the agency's published ratings. Its CLO methodology will treat these as being identical to Moody's published ratings and will further boost the analysis of the published CLO ratings that hold the relevant loans.
A notable feature of the UMLR is that Moody's will monitor and rate the credit quality of the company and facilities for the life of the loan and make it available to a company's existing and prospective loan syndicate members solely through an electronic dataroom platform.
"The UMLR product provides a definitive analysis that is identical to published ratings, thereby delivering, upon the borrower's request, a rigorous and detailed credit analysis to loan market participants," says Andrew Harling, a Moody's senior vice president. Harling also cited the European market's positive response to the service.
"All existing and prospective syndicate members will be able to view Moody's detailed analysis on a particular company by accessing the platform," he added. "The borrower company will provide details regarding the syndicate members to the dataroom provider who will coordinate access to the dataroom."
