CCRSource classification.
Publication thresholds
Credit Benchmark requires that two contributor banks provide PDs on an entity before publishing a Consensus Credit Rating. To help preserve anonymity around the contributed data, Credit Benchmark will not publish the exact contributor count when there are fewer than 5 contributors. The table below shows the relationship between the true contributor count and what Credit Benchmark publishes.| True Contributor Count | CCR Source | Published Contributor Count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Not published | Not published |
| 2 | Implied | MIN |
| 3–4 | Consensus | MIN |
| 5+ | Consensus | 5+ |
Any count below 5 is published as MIN rather than the actual number. This prevents users from inferring individual bank contributions when the pool is small.
Implied ratings
When exactly 2 banks contribute a PD for an entity, Credit Benchmark introduces a third obfuscation point before publishing. This synthetic point is added to prevent reverse engineering of individual bank views from the published average — a concern that is more acute when the contributor pool is very small. The obfuscation point is designed not to move the average, so the published rating still accurately reflects the views of the contributing banks. It adds protection without distorting the signal. TheCCRSource field is set to Implied in this case to signal that the published rating is derived from a protected pool rather than a full Consensus.
When to use CCRSource
Filter onCCRSource = "Consensus" when you want to work only with ratings backed by 3 or more independent bank views. Implied ratings are valid credit signals but carry more uncertainty and a degree of obfuscation by design.