New rating agency ranks EM banks by financial crime risk

A former US Treasury official and a corporate lawyer are launching a rating agency that will rank banks in emerging markets based on their corporate governance and exposure to financial crime.

Sigma Ratings, which is due to go live later this year, will use artificial intelligence (AI) to produce country and entity level ratings from publicly available data, as well as more detailed ratings for institutions that provide internal information on their controls, procedures and systems.

Stuart Jones Jr, Sigma’s chief executive, helped set up the National Counterterrorism Centre in Virginia before serving as a Treasury financial attaché in Afghanistan and the Middle East.