AM Best Brand Guidelines: Alfred M. Best’s 1899 Insurer Reports & Oldwick Ratings

Reports on insurers, from 1899.

AM Best began in New York City in 1899. English Wikipedia says Alfred M. Best, who was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, and had worked for insurers, brokers and the insurance publication The Spectator while still young, set up the firm to tell brokers and buyers how financially sound insurers were, working from their accounting records. An earlier venture he began in 1897 with two partners, publishing financial reports on insurers, lasted about 18 months, the same article says.

The business grew in steps. English Wikipedia says it began with annual evaluations, added monthly reports in 1904 and issued its first formal ratings in 1906. That year, after the San Francisco earthquake, Best and his staff spent months on a report on the fire losses of more than 200 insurers; the article says the report sold 250,000 copies and brought the young firm publicity.

The company has stayed in private hands. English Wikipedia describes A.M. Best Company, Inc. as privately held and says it moved from New York to Morristown, New Jersey, in 1965 and on to Oldwick, in the same state, in 1974. Oldwick is still the headquarters: Insurance Journal described AM Best as “headquartered in Oldwick, New Jersey” in October 2024.

The name is written two ways. Insurance Journal’s 2024 report uses “AM Best” for the group, while the legal names of its rating companies keep the older form with full stops, as in A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc.

Ratings, directories and a news wire.

AM Best’s core product is the financial strength rating, an opinion of an insurer’s ability to pay claims, English Wikipedia says. It also rates instruments issued by insurers, such as bonds, notes and securitisation products. Both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners have designated it a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO), the same article says, and Insurance Journal reported in June 2019 that the company’s pursuit of that designation succeeded in 2005.

Publishing has run alongside rating from the start. English Wikipedia names Best’s Recommended Insurance Attorneys & Adjusters as the oldest of its directories, alongside BestWeek, a weekly newsletter; Best’s Review, a monthly magazine in print and digital form; and BestWire, an online news wire. It also lists a news bureau in Washington, D.C.

The firm went abroad gradually. English Wikipedia names offices in London, Hong Kong, Dubai, Mexico City and Singapore, plus a branch in Amsterdam; in London it runs separate rating and information companies. In February 2003 Insurance Journal reported that A.M. Best had brought its rating and information work for Japan, Australia and New Zealand together under A.M. Best Asia-Pacific Ltd. in Hong Kong, whose regional coverage ran from China and Korea to Indonesia and Thailand. The company’s bulletin, quoted in that report, said the move followed a significant expansion of its business and the building of a local analytical team in Hong Kong.

In February 2019 the same publication reported that the company was providing rating services in more than 90 countries, that offices in Dubai, Singapore and Amsterdam had been opened under a regional chief who joined in 2007, and that it was streamlining its management, citing the rising cost of local regulation of credit rating agencies. In October 2024 Insurance Journal listed its rating affiliates as A.M. Best Europe Rating Services Ltd., A.M. Best Asia-Pacific Limited and its Singapore company, A.M. Best (EU) Rating Services B.V. and A.M. Best América Latina, alongside an information-services company in Europe.

Design and documentation.

Credit rating agencies and financial data firms sell judgement and information, and most of what they publish is documents. A rating action is usually announced in a short notice naming the issuer, the grade and the outlook, followed by longer research reports and the methodology documents that explain how a grade was reached. Letter scales do much of the visual work: Fitch says it introduced its AAA, AA, A, BBB scale in 1924, and French Wikipedia notes that its long-term grades are very close to those of Standard & Poor’s, with plus and minus signs for the notches in between.

Regulation shapes that paperwork. In the United States, agencies can be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations, the status that lets their ratings be used for regulatory purposes; in the European Union, the European Securities and Markets Authority supervises credit rating agencies and publishes its enforcement decisions as public notices. Disclosures, criteria and codes of conduct therefore sit beside the marketing pages on these firms’ websites.

Data products carry the brands to a wider audience. Agencies and research houses deliver ratings, research and data through subscription platforms and data feeds, and some lend their names to index families and fund ratings: Morningstar said in 2020 that it had worked with Sustainalytics since 2016 on a sustainability rating for funds and a global sustainability index family. Training arms, webinars and conferences add further outlets for the same research.

Against that volume of documents, the corporate mark is often just a name or a set of initials, repeated across reports, notices and dashboards. This guide sets out what can be checked about each firm — who founded it, who owns it and how it is regulated — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A founder’s name on every masthead.

Rating now sits in its own company. Insurance Journal reported in June 2019 that the credit rating subsidiary, A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc., had been established in January 2016, and named Arthur Snyder III as chairman, president and chief executive of the parent, AM Best Co. Inc. Matthew C. Mosher became president and chief executive of the rating company on 1 July 2019, the same report said. In October 2024 the publication reported that James A. Gillard Jr. had been named president of A.M. Best Rating Services, succeeding Mosher, who was retiring at the end of that year. Gillard had joined in 2008 and, the report said, had spent nearly a decade leading changes to AM Best’s rating methodology and rating tools; Mosher stayed on for the time being as chair or chief executive of the overseas affiliates.

The rating company has faced one recent regulatory action. In September 2024 the SEC charged six NRSROs, among them A.M. Best Rating Services, over failures to maintain and preserve electronic communications, Funds Society reported on 6 September 2024. The firms admitted the facts set out in the SEC’s orders, acknowledged that the conduct broke the record-keeping provisions of federal securities law and agreed to pay civil penalties. The SEC said A.M. Best and one other firm had made early efforts to comply and had cooperated with its investigation, so neither was required to hire a compliance consultant.

For a design guide, AM Best shows how a rating agency’s name can rest on its founder’s surname and on publications whose titles carry it: Best’s Review, BestWeek and BestWire. Compare Moody’s, another rating agency named after its founder, and Fitch Ratings. For this guide we use a deep navy, slate and ivory with a muted gold accent and a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep AM Best’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.