Let’s hear it for Jesper Andersen and Toby Segaran, two geniuses who saw an opportunity after AAA-rated companies began to fail in the midst of the economic collapse. Their solution? Sounds obvious — a more effective corporate credit risk modeling system.
So the two entrepreneurs and analytics gurus put their heads together to form freerisk.org, which is:
a project with the goal of making freely available the data, algorithms and tools necessary to perform risk modeling. We believe that risk management is too important to society to be an arcane subject or competitive advantage.
And the risk management community screams “Hallelujah!”
Most of the numbers are crunched by a team of volunteer finance fanatics who rate companies using crowdsourcing. The site even offers an open application programming interface (API), which lets users design their own risk-crunching models.
Will this site serve to forever correct the corrupt and biased ratings of agencies such as AM Best, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s? Maybe not, but it’s a great alternative.