EPFO to use Brickwork credit ratings for fund investment

Retirement fund body Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has decided to use ratings of securities and bonds by credit rating firm Brickwork Rating India for investing its funds.

"The ratings carried out by M/s Brickwork for various securities and bonds issued by borrowers shall be treated and qualify for investment made by EPFO at par with the other Sebi-approved rating agencies," an EPFO official order said.

At present, EPFO investments are made on the basis of ratings provided by credit rating agencies recognised by market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), which include ICRA, CARE, Fitch and Crisil.

The EPFO has a huge corpus of over Rs 3 lakh crore with a subscriber base of 4.71 crore.

The EPFO's existing fund managers, including ICICI Pru, HSBC AMC, Reliance Capital and SBI, use the ratings of Sebi-recognised credit rating agencies for investing the retirement money in various securities or bonds.

Brickwork provides ratings, grading and research services.

Rating services include issue ratings, fixed deposit ratings, corporate governance ratings and issuer ratings.

The company also provides initial public offer grading, research and analytical services to various stakeholders like exchanges, regulators and government entities.

Brickwork Ratings' corporate office is in Bangalore, with regional offices at New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.