AM Best Releases Revised Criteria Procedure: ‘Best’s National Scale Ratings’

July 31, 2025 at 11:14 AM EDT

AM Best has released its revised criteria procedure, “Best’s National Scale Ratings” (NSR), which is effective immediately.

AM Best initiated a Call for Comment (CFC) related to the NSR criteria procedure on March 24, 2025, with the comment period closing on April 23, 2025.

The revisions to criteria procedure include the introduction of NSR coverage for three additional countries: Algeria, Brazil and Thailand. This will allow greater differentiation among insurance participants in their respective markets.

A Best’s NSR is a relative opinion of an insurance company’s financial strength within a single country. NSRs are constructed based on the financial characteristics of (re)insurers that are domiciled in the country, and to an extent, mitigate country-specific limiting factors in the global rating analysis. To denote the difference between a global Issuer Credit Rating (ICR) and Best’s NSR, the NSR has an “.XX” with the XX representing a two-letter country code.

The revisions to the NSR criteria procedure will not result in a change to any currently published Best’s Credit Ratings.

During the CFC period, AM Best did not receive any written comments (public, private or anonymous) from market participants in the insurance industry or other interested parties on the proposed revisions to the criteria procedure. Consequently, no changes have been made to the final version of the criteria procedure as a result of the CFC. The Response to Comment document is published here: https://web.ambest.com/rating-methodologies/comments.

The updated criteria procedure is available at http://www.ambest.com/ratings/methodology.asp and the related mapping scales document at https://www3.ambest.com/ratings/cr/crisk.aspx.

AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.