A.M. Best

A.M. Best was established in 1899 by Alfred M. Best. It is an American Credit Rating Agency with offices in London, Washington D.C. and Hong Kong. Its main role is to rate insurance companies on their ability to pay the claims. The financial instruments like bonds, notes etc, that are provided by the insurance companies are also rated. Hence the main highlight of A.M. Best is the insurance industry.

The same criteria is followed for all the insurance companies that wish to rate themselves. Since the yardstick is the same, insurers may be compared irrespective of the country they reside in.

There are 3 types of ratings that are provided by A.M. Best. They are:

• Best's Financial Strength Rating: From this rating system the policy holders get to know the financial viability of their insurer in terms of payment of claims.
  
  
• Best's Issuer Credit Ratings: This type of rating provides quantitative as well as qualitative valuation of the strength of the balance sheet of the company.
  
  
• Best's Debt Ratings: This rates the capacity of issuers to satisfy the debt obligations of the security holders.

In the following section we have listed some of the services offered by A.M. Best.

• A.M. Best is the sole provider of interactive rating services to different industries, like insurance, hospitals and health care.
  
  
• Insurance news is published in magazines issued by A.M. Best. They are Best's Review and Best Week.
  
  
• Best's Statement File is an authentic source of information to the insurance agencies in United states and Canada.
  
  
• The Insurance Reports that are supplied by A.M. Best is the storehouse of data of different insurers and reinsurers all over the world.
  
  
• Apart from the above mentioned services A.M. Best is also the publisher of books and CD-ROMS which is of immense use to the insurance organisations.