YouTube·KakaoTalk... Changing Communication Strategies of Credit Rating Agencies

Offline seminars and face-to-face meetings with institutions difficult due to COVID-19... Active two-way communication

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jihwan] The communication strategies within the credit rating industry are undergoing significant changes. While previously the focus was on one-way services such as reports, recently there has been a shift towards proactive, interactive communication that first identifies market inquiries and then responds to them through reports and other means.

According to the credit rating industry on the 21st, Korea Credit Rating (KCR) has decided to greatly expand its dialogue-style podcast services based on YouTube. This is to immediately share their views on major credit issues that attract market attention. Additionally, to quickly convey opinions on various questions arising from the market, they have established a ‘Market FAQ’ channel on their website where users can directly ask questions.

Korea Investors Service (KIS) is also expanding information provision to users by utilizing YouTube and KakaoTalk. They are the only company in the industry currently offering services via Telegram, which is most frequently used by investment department officials at financial companies. Starting this year, they have also launched dialogue-style webinars combining real-time and recorded formats. A KIS official stated, "Unlike traditional offline seminars which are one-time events with highly transient information, YouTube allows for replays, resulting in higher user satisfaction."

NICE Credit Rating was the first in the industry to implement an information service via KakaoTalk that notifies users of corporate credit rating changes. They provide daily updates on the previous day’s published daily rating disclosures, summarized report contents, interest rates, and various economic indicators. Currently, the service has about 1,700 users. Particularly, satisfaction is high for YouTube videos that condense research report contents into about five minutes. The fact that anyone can freely post opinions on all reports without logging in is also part of efforts to establish a market-friendly communication system.

The credit rating industry’s move to strengthen communication is due to a significant drop in content exposure compared to before caused by COVID-19. It has become difficult to hold offline seminars, which used to gather about 300 people 3 to 4 times a year, and face-to-face meetings with institutions have decreased, leading to a much poorer transmission of produced information than in the past. A securities industry official said, "In the past, we were in a position of passively viewing credit rating agencies’ reports, but recently the credit rating industry tends to proactively provide timely comments on specific issues that the market is curious about."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.