The Bank of Russia has launched a unified database of ratings of domestic companies - a rating repository that includes ratings of legal entities and bonds from four credit rating agencies (CRA).

Its list includes the Analytical Credit Rating Agency (ACRA), Expert RA, the National Rating Agency (NRA) and National Credit Ratings (NCR).

Now all information is available in an aggregated form, Nikolai Ivanov, Deputy General Director of the Expert RA agency, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta. As a result, this makes it easier for people to make investment decisions.

In conditions when Russian companies are forced to hide their financial information from the public due to sanctions, credit ratings are one of the few tools that investors can rely on when assessing their risks, N. Ivanov stressed.

A credit rating is an assessment of a company's ability to pay its obligations. It is needed to decide where to invest money. The higher the rating, the more reliable the borrower is and vice versa, Evgeny Kogan, a professor at the Higher School of Economics and founder of the Bitkogan project, explained to RG.

Credit ratings of companies and securities help determine which portfolio to buy in.

"It is difficult for private investors without experience in analytical work to conduct a credit analysis on their own. And here we got detailed and professional information in one place. The repository will be useful for both investors and analysts," Kogan concluded.

According to the latest data, in June, the number of Russians who opened brokerage accounts on the Moscow Exchange reached 32.4 million people. In the first half of the year, their number increased by more than 2 million people.