Fitch Ratings secured the nod for most transparent credit rating agency (CRA) for the second year in a row, after its environmental, social and governance (ESG) relevance scores continued to impress, helped by the expansion of names and asset classes covered.

Fitch's ESG Relevance Scores – launched in January 2019 – covered over 10,200 entities and transactions by October, including corporates, sovereigns, and covered bonds. The scores are made public and have been maintained as an integrated part of the credit research undertaken by Fitch.

Since launching with coverage of corporates, Fitch has been rolling out the scores across a number of other assets classes, including sovereigns in April and public finance and infrastructure in May.

Fitch sustainable finance head Andrew Steel told Environmental Finance that the "standout" achievement for the year, however, was the launch of relevance scores for various structured finance asset classes in October.

"Fitch is the only CRA (and we believe the only market participant) to publish detailed views and opinions on the materiality of ESG to the formation and maintenance of structured finance credit transactions," Steel added.

The relevance scores have been well received by the market, with Italian lender Unicredit describing the system as providing a "higher degree of transparency" than other CRAs.

Steel adds, however, that clients continue to request "more detailed, consistent and comparable ESG information and analysis", which Fitch is keen to deliver.

"During the remainder of 2020 we will be launching a dedicated, real-time ESG score feed, working on a standardised scenario assessment tool for longer term ESG risks, to 2050 and beyond, and looking at how we can best serve strategic investors' requirements for better comparable ESG data on bond issues," he said. EF