Standard & Poor’s (S&P Global)

Designing Self-study Curriculum for Bond Raters

Standard & Poor’s, a globally recognized financial index and credit-rating agency, engaged Cora Group to develop a standardized, self-directed learning curriculum for junior municipal bond raters. The goal was to enable users to attain basic knowledge and bond rating proficiency on their own, thereby reducing the amount of supervisory and training time required of senior bond raters.

Challenge

Cora Group developed an instructional guide to enable junior bond raters to acquire basic content knowledge on their own before working with senior bond raters on more complex tasks requiring senior judgment and expert supervision. We organized content material gathered through a materials review and individual interviews with senior bond raters to create a modular self-study curriculum with learner goals, informational content, practice exercises, and evaluation tools.

Solution

This project reduced agency’s training costs by increasing the speed at which junior bond raters gained proficiency, while freeing senior bond raters' time so they could focus on higher-level bond rating responsibilities.

Outcome