Banking Rating Systems for IRB: Comparison of Three Systems from German-speaking Environment

The aim of the article is to compare several rating systems used by banks and their affiliates, especially in German-speaking countries. The research is focused on the rating of business entities, more precisely the corporate ones, (especially limited liability companies or joint-stock companies). In particular, two aspects of the rating of the corporations are highlighted in the rating system comparison, namely: (i) which quantitative indicators are used for the calculation of the hard-facts and (ii) how the soft-facts are included in the rating system. The result of the research shows, that concerning the quantitative indicators (i), the highest emphasis is put on the capital structure of an enterprise (whether in the form of Equity to Liabilities or Equity to Total assets) in all compared rating systems. Concerning the other indicators used for the calculation, the monitored rating systems are different, and the total number of indicators also differs (from 6 to 9). For soft-facts (ii) all rating systems agree on some of the queries (e.g. the sensitivity of the rated entity to market fluctuations), but otherwise the number and the topics of the queries overlap only partially