Brunswick, ME – August 15, 2016— Coastal Enterprises, Inc. (CEI) announced today that it has received a rating of AAA for Impact Performance from Aeris, the information service for community investors. The AAA is the highest rating given by the agency. Aeris (formerly known as CARS®) provides comprehensive, third-party assessments of community development financial institution (CDFI) loan fund financial strength and performance and impact.
In addition, CEI scored a two (on a scale of one to five where one is the highest) for financial strength and performance. CEI was also assigned a Policy Plus score for its public policy engagement.
“These scores affirm that we are making progress towards helping to create economically and environmentally healthy communities in which all people, especially those with low incomes, can reach their full potential,” said CEI CEO Betsy Biemann. “The ability to maintain such exemplary scores since the last rating three years ago is due to our professional, mission-driven team of lenders, investors, business advisors, and resource and policy development staff.”
Banks, foundations, fund managers, and others rely on Aeris ratings to identify and evaluate community investment opportunities that meet their impact goals and risk parameters. Aeris has issued more than 600 ratings opinions since 2004.
The Aeris ratings measures a community investor’s commitment to rigor with regard to its financial performance and impact. The rating consist of two main components: (1) an Impact Performance Rating, which measures how well a CDFI does what it says it’s trying to do; (2) a Financial Strength and Performance Rating, which assesses overall creditworthiness.
More information about Aeris ratings is available here: http://www.aerisinsight.com/who/about-aeris-ratings/.
As an Aeris-rated CDFI, CEI is also included in the Aeris Cloud, the only source of real-time financial and impact performance data on CDFI loan funds. The Aeris Cloud was created to give investors access to Wall Street-quality data on CDFI loan funds like CEI.