Capital Information Services (CIS) offers three types of services: the main Carbon Credit Ratings service, the Carbon Credit Pricing services (to include Mark-to-Market pricing of carbon credits) and the Due Diligence services in the assessment of GHG emission reduction projects.

Before covering a wider spectrum of other schemes, Carbon Finance was originally the general term applied to resources provided to a project developed under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). These resources are provided by countries facing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction targets by purchasing the emission reduction units ("carbon" for short) expected from the CDM project activity.

Capital Information Services (“CIS”) is a specialized rating agency dedicated to the study and appraisal of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction projects, with the view of gauging the projects’ delivery risk. CIS provides delivery risk analysis, leading to a rating for each project individually. When required, the pricing of the forward carbon credits of a given project is obtained from the rating through a calibration process that follows current market conditions.

Lenders and investors often need a project analysis that goes beyond the scope of a delivery risk rating. CIS also provides full due diligence services to meet such needs.

Each project faces a number of hurdles on its way to validation, registration or verification, and statistics show that a vast majority of projects never reach those milestones. Furthermore, many projects that succeed on the registration front still exhibit weaknesses when the time comes actually to tally the emission reductions and to obtain issuance of tradable Carbon Credits.

Capital Information Services Ltd (CIS) has a strong track record as a rating agency, with years of experience looking at information in emerging markets with the view of detecting whether such information could be trusted. CIS would then translate its findings into credit ratings that were often at odds with creditworthiness assessments from other sources blindly relying on published information.

Capital Information Services Ltd (“CIS”) was established in 1987 in Hong Kong as the first regional rating agency in Asia, offering country sovereign risk ratings as well as issuer ratings on financial institutions in about 10 countries.