Crisil: Beyond Ratings

India’s largest credit rating agency has continuously upped its innovation game and transformed itself into a global analytical powerhouse.

- Salil Panchal

It was 1994 when Ashu Suyash—then an executive in the financial institutions group at Citibank in India—along with senior executives was quizzed by a Crisil team of analysts as part of a ratings exercise. The foreign bank was seeking to raise tier II debt and this was the first time in India that a subsidiary of a foreign entity was being rated by an Indian company.

“They asked all the tough questions, from profitability of the subsidiary to P&L data, debt-raising steps and strategy for growth,” says Suyash, who was oblivious to the fact that a few decades later she would lead the company. Apart from the analysts, the Crisil team had heavyweights such as the then managing director and CEO, late R Ravimohan, and senior analyst and future leader Roopa Kudva at the meeting.

Later, when she was heading Fidelity’s asset management business in 2012, Suyash had witnessed a similar round of questioning from Crisil to assess the quality of the fund house, mutual fund rankings and financing needs. In March 2015, Suyash was approached to lead Crisil after Kudva quit the firm after 23 years there, including eight as CEO.

“All these thoughts [of my previous interactions with Crisil] came to mind. I knew the company and people well,” says Suyash, now managing director and CEO of Crisil. “I often tell my team about this, it is like Intel Inside [referring to the popular marketing phrase of the IT giant].”

Her entry into Crisil, however, came with its own set of challenges: She had never been a ratings analyst and was an ‘outsider’; her predecessor Kudva had risen up the ranks to become CEO.