History

Since 1979, Political Risk Services (the Coplin-O'Leary Country Risk Rating System™) has been recognized worldwide as the original system for quantifying and rating political risk. This system of independent risk assessment was developed by Professors William D. Coplin and Michael K. O'Leary during 20 years of research at the Maxwell School of Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Originally the Political Risk Services division of Frost & Sullivan, Inc., and then part of UK-based IBC Group (now "Informa"), the company kept its original focus on political risk analysis and became independent in 1999.

“PRS” formed and developed around a product known as Frost & Sullivan’s World Political Risk Forecasts, which evolved into the Political Risk Services product line. At the end of 1992, the PRS company added another country risk analysis system to its offerings, International Country Risk Guide (ICRG).

ICRG had been launched in 1980 as direct competition to the new Coplin-O’Leary product, but the two independent and highly complementary products have coexisted well since 1993 when ICRG evolved into an integral part of PRS’ offerings. Independently acclaimed and sourced time and again by researchers, the IMF, the World Bank, and a host of other international financial institutions, the ICRG has become one of the world’s most trusted resources for evaluating and forecasting international risk.