Peer Benchmarking is a comparative analysis that shows how your company's financial performance measures up against a group of industry peers. It is one of the report types available within the FHR Exchange, and it complements your Financial Health Rating by providing the context of how your key financial ratios — margin, leverage, liquidity, and efficiency — stack up against companies of similar profile.
Tier availability
Peer Benchmarking is available to members on every tier of the FHR Exchange, from Basic through Pro+. Generating a Peer Benchmark Report does not consume credits.
What the Peer Benchmark Report contains
Every Peer Benchmark Report compares your company to a peer group across three layers of data.
The first layer is a summary table of headline scores — your FHR, Core Health Score, and simulated FHR alongside the peer group's averages on the same measures. This gives you an immediate read on whether your overall financial health is above, below, or in line with your peers.
The second layer is a ratio breakdown table covering the financial ratios that drive RapidRatings' rating methodology — measures of profitability (such as Net Margin and Gross Margin), return (Return on Assets), efficiency (Sales to Assets), liquidity (Current Ratio), and leverage (Total Debt to Assets and Operating Profit to Interest Expense). Each ratio is shown for your company alongside the peer group average, with the variance highlighted.
The third layer is a written summary of where you outperform and underperform the peer group. The summary names specific ratios so you can identify the financial areas worth focusing on.
Example summary: In its most recent period, Walmart Inc outperforms the sector with respect to Return on Assets, Operating Profit to Interest Expense and Sales to Assets. It underperforms the sector with respect to Net Margin, Current Ratio and Gross Margin. Walmart Inc has a lower Total Debt to Assets ratio than the sector.
In addition to the summary tables and written analysis, the report includes multiple pages of charts that visualize each ratio's trend over time for both your company and the peer group.
Customizing your peer group
By default, the Peer Benchmark Report compares your company against a standard subset of public peers, automatically selected based on your industry. You can substantially increase the value of the analysis by customizing the peer group to match the comparison you actually want to draw.
The customization options are:
Criterion | What it controls |
Sector | The industry of the peer companies, selectable at 2-, 4-, or 6-digit NAICS code granularity |
Country | The geographic scope of the peer group |
Size | The sales range (in USD) of the peer companies |
Type | Whether to include public companies only, private companies only, or both |
The minimum peer group size is five companies. You can cast a wide net by relaxing the criteria or narrow your focus by tightening them — for example, comparing only against private companies in your country within a specific sales band.
When to use Peer Benchmarking
Peer Benchmarking is most useful when you want to understand whether the financial position reflected in your FHR is typical for your industry and size, or whether specific aspects of it stand out. It complements the FHR Report by answering a different question — not "how financially healthy am I?" but "how does my financial health compare to companies in my situation?"
It is particularly useful when preparing for a conversation where context matters — explaining your financial position to a prospective client, defending your performance against industry assumptions, or identifying which of your ratios are most likely to draw scrutiny.