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Over the last ten years, economic actors in French-speaking West Africa have begun to adopt the qualitative approach of transparency and good governance inspired by the financial rating exercise.
French-speaking Central Africa has followed the West African region lead, and contributes to making financial ratings an increasingly used tool for assessing credit quality.
Although the widespread use of financial ratings by investors as a tool to measure their exposure to the risk of default by issuers of securities is still limited, the changes experienced by the financial and banking sector since 2009 are encouraging.
Indeed, the West African regional financial market instituted in 2009, financial rating as a means of assessing the risk of default of issuers and structured financing which allows, in particular to :
- Limit, under certain conditions, the use of guarantees and, consequently, the increase in the cost of bond issues;
- Reduce the asymmetry of information between the capital providers and the entities seeking to finance their development through the financial market.
By giving confidence to investors, the regulatory authorities are providing the means to improve the depth of the financial market and its development, in order to make it a certain financing niche for the sub-regional economy, following the model of other financial marketplaces in the world.
In this game, the recent regulatory decisions in the banking sector that introduced financial rating for the evaluation of the counterparty risks of banks, are a strong signal of the consideration of the sub-regional banking market environment’s evolution over the last decade.
Bloomfield Investment Corporation’s contribution during this period has been through a constant work of pedagogy (within the framework of the accompaniment of the capital market authorities and training sessions, seminars, conferences) and the instillation of a rating culture through practice among private and institutional economic actors in French-speaking Africa and beyond.
Using methodologies and rigorous methods common to all financial rating agencies, Bloomfield Investment Corporation considers the contextual framework of operations of the rated entities, so as to provide an adequate response to the markets’ expectations.
The francophone economic zones of West and Central Africa are working to close the gaps that existed with the rest of the world in terms of improving the credit quality of various stakeholders.
Since its creation in 2007, Bloomfield Investment Corporation has unceasingly contributed to the evolution of the economic world’s view on Africa, through its analysis and the establishment of a framework for reflection, discussion and expression of the views of economic and financial actors.
Thus, since 2017, Bloomfield Investment Corporation has created a country risk debate-conference, to give an African perspective of the interpretation of the risk of African countries.
The concept is to each year, publicly debate on a country risk report produced by the rating agency, which maps the risk of a given country, highlighting its assets, opportunities and areas of improvement, so as to provide better visibility to investors and development partners.
The agency also recently established economic forecasts, thus providing a reading grid of the evolution of economic conditions of a zone, in real time.
Bloomfield Investment Corporation, the first financial rating agency in French-speaking Africa, intervenes with clients in Africa and Europe through :