Verdant Rock, a Bermuda-based financial guarantor specialising in emerging markets, has been assigned a BBB+ rating with a stable outlook by Fitch Ratings.

Founded in 2025 and holding a Class 3B licence from the Bermuda Monetary Authority, Verdant Rock plans to deliver investment grade financial guarantee capacity at scale across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, bringing much needed capacity to an underserved market.

Tolga Unuzer, Verdant Rock’s cofounder and chief executive officer, said via LinkedIn: “We built Verdant Rock to fill a gap that has existed in emerging markets credit for over a decade … The rating and the operational capacity to execute are now in place.”

Fitch said the long-term insurer financial strength (IFS) rating and long-term issuer default rating were BBB+, reflecting “Verdant Rock's strong initial capitalisation and prudent financial profile, balanced against execution risks associated with its start-up status and lack of operating record”.

Fitch views Verdant Rock's business profile as good, supported by the longstanding experience of the board and senior management in financial services, emerging markets, structured finance and risk management, and the planned risk governance framework.

Fitch assesses Verdant Rock's guarantee portfolio risk as “medium”, considering key planned portfolio characteristics including average policy life of around five years, 40 per cent recovery rate in the event of default, and underlying credit quality of guaranteed exposures to be almost equally split across BBB, BB and B categories.

Fitch views the emphasis on secured and collateralised structures as supportive of recoveries, even though the non-investment-grade component of the targeted portfolio indicates meaningful credit risk.

Fitch expects Verdant Rock to “broadly deliver on its base-case forecast, including a return on equity of about 21 per cent and a combined ratio of about 36 per cent in 2027 to 2035”.

However, Fitch views execution risk as higher than for more established peers, given Verdant Rock's limited operating record and the sensitivity of projected outcomes to assumptions on origination volumes, pricing discipline, loss emergence and recoveries in EM credit conditions.