Highlights:

During the unprecedented year 2020, the company stood resilient and relevant amidst externalities and delivered revenue growth of 14.4% and net profit growth of 3.1% for 2020.

The company has continued to win new clients and mandates across markets and saw good traction for products.

The company completed the acquisition of 100% stake in Greenwich Associates LLC (USA) and its subsidiaries (GA) in February 2020 which includes upfront and deferred consideration.

The segregation of credit ratings business into a wholly owned subsidiary, CRISIL Ratings was completed during Q4CY20 pursuant to changes in the SEBI regulations and has no impact on the company's businesses.

With continued focus on innovation, the company has launched India's first AIF benchmarks, while introduced high frequency district dashboards and Scenario Expansion Manager (SEM) platform for stress-testing.

During pandemic, the focus on technology ensured seamless operations. The company also ensured high customer engagement with high impact research papers, analysis, webinars and thought papers on emerging trends released throughout the year.

As per the company, the key business trends that will shape the medium term are economic revival (slow and back end in (H2FY22), buoyant capital markets (debt capital market to pick up in H2CY2021), financial and credit stress, AI/ML adoption, accelerated digital transformation, emphasis on social and sustainable practices, increasing focus on non-financial risk, remote working and distributed model etc.

Indian economy is expected to catch-up to pre-Covid level by Q2FY22. Sharp economic recovery benefiting from a low base and expansionary India budget is expected to spur growth in 2021

The focus of the company on strengthening the core, commercialization of new offerings and continued investments in technology and talent to augur well for driving future growth

The risks to the business includes prolonged impact of Covid-19 pandemic and delay in economic revival, evolving regulatory environment, information security and cyber-related risks, adverse currency movement, intense competition, reputation risk etc.

Greenwich acquisition

Greenwich accelerates the strategy of the company to be the leading player in the global benchmarking analytics across financial services. It complements Coalition Corporate and Investment Banking benchmarking products and expands offerings to commercial banking, asset & wealth managers

Greenwich has nearly five decades of proven track record in benchmarking analytics and its most trusted brand for sourcing and aggregating high value performance data in financial services.

The acquisition augments the expertise company the company by addition of ‘Voice of Customer' surveys, proprietary data assets, and capabilities to source and aggregate high value performance data

Greenwich has strong customer & market presence with 300+ clients across 20+countries, 2 lakh+ buy side contracts, while 35 of the world's top 50 commercial banks, 19 of the world's top 20 investment banks and 41 of the world's top 50 asset managers are clients

The company will continue to invest in Geenwich ahead.

The company expects benefits of coalition and Greenwich synergy to starts from CY2021. The company expects Greenwich to add value to results ahead.

Ratings Business

The Ratings segment registered healthy growth driven by performance of Large Corporate Ratings. The differentiated positioning and high quality of Ratings helped in client wins through the year.

The bond issuance by quantum increased 8% in 2020, but number of issuers declined 18%. Further, constrained credit growth impacted the mid-corporate ratings, thus off setting growth in the segment.

The company launched Ratings Analytica, a personalized portal and mobile application (app).

The company released over 100 press releases and hosted 30 webinars covering key sectors such as agrochemicals, InvITs/REITS, hospitals, fertilizers, dairy etc.

The company expects pick up in bonds issuance and credit growth to improve demand for credit ratings in H2CY2021.

Government focus on infrastructure is positive for the bond market and credit rating demand. The ARC and AMC structure for the bad debt management of the banks is also positive for credit growth.

Research business

The company has improved margins excluding Greenwich, while the company expects to continue to expand margins. Research segment grew strongly driven by Global Research & Analytics (GR&A) performance and acquisition of Greenwich

GR&A saw growth with addition of new logos in traditional areas such as model and traded risk. The business also witnessed traction in non-financial and credit risk.

Growth in the segment was offset by weak performance in Coalition, which saw headwinds due to cost pressures faced by global banks.

India research continued to provide relevant insights and solutions to its domestic clients.

Current year financials include one-time acquisition related costs and impact of Covid as client decisioning slowed across markets the company serves.

The company launched India's first AIF benchmarks, new analytics / research -District level risk tracking dashboards, Pandemic perspectives -Greenwich Investor resilience index.

It hosted multiple roundtables covering topics such as LIBOR transition, ESG and stress testing. Released 50 PRs and webinars on key sectors including steel, cement, pharma, agriculture, telecom, investment banks, commercial banks and asset managers.

The focus is on infrastructure and technology adoption to create emerging needs for analytics, risk and infra solutions

Infrastructure Advisory

The Advisory segment witnessed good traction in Q4CY2020. New mandates won in areas of regulatory reporting, credit risk and select city infrastructure projects

However, the segment witnessed impact of delayed decision making and implementation delays given Covid-19 pandemic impacting full year margins

Rs 100 trillion spend on Infra over next 4 to 5 years with higher budgeted capex on Infra proposed for 2021 augurs well for the infrastructure advisory business.

Recent budget announced several steps towards enabling financing for the infrastructure sector e.g. creation of Development Finance Institution (DFI).

Increasing emphasis on end-to-end solution, and technology-enabled project monitoring dashboards

The company has launched the new ICON platform with new-age risk assessment models. It hosted multiple webinars during the year on key topics such as Project Finance & PPP Financial Modelling, Contract Development & Management for Urban and Climate PPP Projects.