OREANDA-NEWS. Fitch Solutions announces Fitch Connect, a powerful integrated information platform, delivering Fitch Ratings and Research along with Fundamental Financials, economic data and analytics. Fitch Connect enables credit professionals to make risk management decisions with efficiency and ease.

'Fitch is committed to providing credit professionals with transparent, timely and insightful information,' said Paul Taylor, President and CEO, Fitch Group. 'We are strengthening our information business with Fitch Connect, which delivers high quality research and data through a sophisticated and flexible platform.'

Analysis conducted by financial professionals receives more scrutiny today than ever before. Demands from new regulations and internal and external compliance audits are adding pressure on risk managers and IT departments to do more with less. The Fitch Connect platform offers a suite of capabilities such as a web interface, data feed, API and Microsoft Excel add-in which are designed to make it easier for users to access, consume and integrate information into their workflows.

'We work with credit professionals and bankers every day and have developed a strong understanding of what content and capabilities they need most,' said Brian Filanowski, Global Head of Product, Fitch Solutions. 'The Fitch Connect Platform is built using next-generation technology which provides us the ability to quickly respond to our clients' needs.'

Powered by the same proprietary data used by many of the Fitch Ratings analysts, the Fitch Connect platform offers a robust set of interlinked data and content including:

--Fundamental Financials - the industry's most comprehensive and high quality data source for bank fundamental financial content in the industry today. The data set covers 30,000+ public and private banks, 11,600 insurance firms, and economic and forecasting data for the majority of the world's sovereigns.

--Fitch Credit Ratings - 9,000 rated entities plus the entire Fitch universe of 1.34 million current and historical credit ratings, including four levels of market sector indexing, and 25 rating types.

--Fitch Research - independent credit research and market commentary from industry and regional specialists who assess the health of issuers across the world's capital markets covering 31 countries, 24 sectors and 140,000+ research reports.

All financial data is subject to rigorous quality assurance processes, which provides credit risk managers with the timely and reliable data they need to assess risk. Formerly available from third parties for the last 15 years, Fitch's Fundamental Financials will now only be offered through Fitch Connect.