Credit Rating

You want to rent an apartment. Nothing too fancy...just a two-bedroom flat in the heart of the city. Before you can get that dream apartment, you need to fill out an application and have the landlord run a credit report.

This credit report will provide a history of all of your debt accounts. It will also attach a credit score that scales between 300 and 850, with the latter being the highest rating for creditworthiness.

Companies, municipalities, and individual countries also have credit ratings, which are traditionally conducted by rating agencies like Moody's, Fitch, or Standard & Poors. Credit rating agencies provide letter grades to bonds as well.