As a credit analyst, where can I find reliable industry data and benchmarks for my analysis?

As a credit analyst, having access to reliable, up-to-date industry benchmarks and financial data is critical for assessing borrower risk, evaluating leverage, and performing comparative financial statement analysis.

Here is where you can find the most reliable industry data and benchmarks, organized by category:

• Commercial Credit & Ratio Benchmarks
• Risk Management Association (RMA) Annual Statement Studies : The gold standard for commercial banking. It provides financial ratio benchmarks (liquidity, coverage, profitability, leverage) categorized by NAICS and SIC codes, split by asset and revenue size ranges. Available via the RMA Annual Statement Studies portal.
• IBISWorld : Excellent for comprehensive industry risk reports, market share data, life cycle analysis, and 5-year forecasts. It includes key financial ratios and industry-specific success factors. Check out the IBISWorld Industry Market Research platform.
• vertical IQ : Great for industry profiles tailored specifically for commercial banking and credit underwriting, highlighting local and national industry trends, credit risks, and financial benchmarks. Explore via Vertical IQ.
• Public Market & Corporate Financial Data
• S&P Capital IQ / Moody's / Fitch Ratings : Essential for corporate and institutional credit analysis. These platforms provide deep credit ratings research, default studies, recovery rates, sector outlooks, and financial data on public companies. Access via S&P Global Market Intelligence or Moody's Ratings.
• Damodaran Online (NYU Stern) : A widely respected, free academic and professional resource maintained by Professor Aswath Damodaran. It offers free global data on beta, cost of capital, return on capital, profit margins, and tax rates by industry sector. Visit the Damodaran Online Data Page.
• SEC EDGAR : The ultimate source for raw public filings (10-Ks, 10-Qs) of public competitors in your target's exact sector for peer group comparisons. Search filings directly on the SEC EDGAR System.
• Macroeconomic & Government Data
• US Census Bureau & Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) : Provides vital data on retail sales, manufacturing shipments, inventories, and broader macroeconomic indicators that affect sector performance. Check the US Census Bureau Economic Indicators.
• Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) : Essential for tracking interest rates, credit spreads, delinquency rates on commercial loans, and sector-specific financial conditions. Access via the FRED Economic Data Portal.

If you'd like, let me know:

• What type of industry or sector you are currently analyzing (e.g., manufacturing, SaaS, healthcare)
• Whether you are looking for free resources or enterprise-level tools

I can help you narrow down the best specific data set for your workflow.

For credit analysis, I’d use a tiered source approach: start with primary/regulatory data, then use specialized industry benchmarks, and finally layer in market/credit data.

Best sources for credit analysis

• RMA Annual Statement Studies — probably the most directly useful benchmark source for commercial lending. It provides industry financial-ratio benchmarks, quartiles, historical data, and industry default probabilities, with data contributed by RMA member financial institutions. It covers hundreds of industries by NAICS and is particularly useful for private/small-to-midsize borrowers.
• S&P Capital IQ / Capital IQ Pro — excellent for building peer groups and comparing leverage, margins, liquidity, cash flow, profitability, growth, and other metrics across public and private companies. S&P provides standardized financials specifically designed for cross-company and cross-industry comparisons.
• SEC EDGAR — for U.S. public borrowers, I would treat the company's actual 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K and exhibits as the primary source. This is especially important when you need to verify debt terms, covenants, guarantees, contingencies, segment performance, and accounting judgments rather than relying on normalized databases.
• Bloomberg — useful when your credit work involves public debt, spreads, yields, ratings, market-implied risk, commodities, interest rates, or detailed peer analysis. It is particularly valuable for understanding how the market is pricing a borrower's credit risk.
• Moody's / S&P Global Ratings / Fitch — valuable for default studies, rating migration, industry outlooks, credit opinions and comparable-company credit metrics. For a rated borrower, the rating-agency methodology and industry-specific commentary can be more informative than generic financial ratios.
• Federal Reserve, FRED and BLS — use these for the macro layer of your credit analysis: interest rates, unemployment, inflation, industrial production, wages, consumer spending, credit conditions, etc. They're particularly useful when you're stress-testing a borrower's revenue or margins.
• U.S. Census / NAICS data — useful for understanding industry size, growth, geographic concentration and industry classification. RMA itself points analysts toward Census/NAICS when determining the appropriate industry classification.
• IBISWorld, Euromonitor, Mintel and similar industry-research providers — useful when you need qualitative industry information such as competitive structure, demand drivers, market size, cyclicality, regulation and industry outlook. I would generally use these to explain a financial benchmark rather than as the benchmark itself.

What I would benchmark

For a typical commercial credit, I'd build a peer/industry benchmark around:

The key is not to compare a borrower against one generic industry median. I'd ideally use:

Borrower → direct peers → NAICS industry quartiles → rating/credit cohort → historical borrower performance → current macro environment.

That gives you a much stronger answer to the credit question: "Is this company's leverage/liquidity/cash generation actually weak, or is it normal for its industry?"

A practical hierarchy

If I were building a credit-analysis workbook, my source hierarchy would be:

1. Borrower's audited financials / SEC filings
2. RMA industry benchmarks for private-company/commercial lending comparisons
3. Capital IQ or Bloomberg for direct peer benchmarking
4. Rating-agency research for credit risk and industry-specific leverage/default context
5. Fed/BLS/Census/FRED for macro and industry-cycle assumptions
6. Industry research providers for qualitative industry dynamics

One important caution: make sure the benchmark definitions match your calculation. For example, "Debt/EBITDA" can vary significantly depending on whether debt includes leases, whether EBITDA is adjusted, and whether the database uses LTM, FY or estimated figures. S&P specifically emphasizes standardized definitions for cross-company comparisons.

If you tell me what type of credit analysis you do (commercial banking, corporate lending, private credit, CRE, etc.) and the industries you cover, I can also give you a credit analyst's source map showing which databases to use for each metric, including free vs. paid sources.

1. Borrower's audited financials / SEC filings
2. RMA industry benchmarks for private-company/commercial lending comparisons
3. Capital IQ or Bloomberg for direct peer benchmarking
4. Rating-agency research for credit risk and industry-specific leverage/default context
5. Fed/BLS/Census/FRED for macro and industry-cycle assumptions
6. Industry research providers for qualitative industry dynamics

One important caution: make sure the benchmark definitions match your calculation. For example, "Debt/EBITDA" can vary significantly depending on whether debt includes leases, whether EBITDA is adjusted, and whether the database uses LTM, FY or estimated figures. S&P specifically emphasizes standardized definitions for cross-company comparisons.

As a credit analyst , you can find reliable industry data and financial benchmarks through commercial financial databases, rating agencies, and industry research providers.

Top Industry Data & Benchmark Sources

Recommended Workflow for Benchmarking

1. Identify the NAICS or SIC code of your target borrower to ensure precise alignment.
2. Pull peer group financial ratios using RMA Statement Studies or Capital IQ to compare margins and leverage.
3. Review macro headwinds via IBISWorld or rating agency sector reports to perform qualitative risk analysis.

If you share the specific industry or sector you are analyzing (e.g., manufacturing, healthcare, software), I can recommend tailored data points and specific credit metrics to focus on.

For a credit analyst, I’d use a layered approach rather than relying on a single benchmark source. The best source depends on whether you’re assessing profitability, leverage, liquidity, cash flow, industry risk, or default risk.

Best sources for credit analysis

The two sources I'd prioritize

1. RMA Statement Studies — for a lending/credit perspective

This is probably the most directly relevant benchmark source if you're analyzing middle-market or privately held borrowers. RMA's current offering includes 642 industries, financial-ratio benchmarks, industry default probabilities, cash-flow measures and historical data.

You can benchmark things such as:

• Current ratio
• Quick ratio
• A/R days
• Inventory days
• A/P days
• Debt-to-net-worth
• Debt-to-assets
• EBITDA/interest
• Sales growth
• Gross margin
• Operating margin
• ROA
• ROE
• Cash flow/debt

The particularly useful feature for credit work is the quartile presentation. Instead of saying "the industry average debt/EBITDA is X," you can ask whether your borrower is around the upper quartile, median or lower quartile.

2. Damodaran — for a free, broad industry dataset

pages.stern.nyu.edu are exceptionally useful when you don't have access to expensive databases.

As of January 2026, for example, his U.S. datasets provide industry-level margins and operating statistics, and the working-capital data covers inventory, receivables, payables and non-cash working capital as percentages of revenue.

That makes it particularly useful for asking:

"Is this borrower's 12% EBITDA margin actually strong?" rather than evaluating the 12% in isolation.

How I'd use the data in an actual credit memo

I'd build a benchmark table something like:

Then I'd go one step further and normalize for business model. A wholesaler, manufacturer, SaaS company and construction contractor can have radically different "normal" working-capital and leverage profiles.

One important caveat

Don't blindly use the industry median as the credit conclusion. Industry benchmarks are a starting point, not a credit standard. A borrower can be below the median and still be a very good credit if it has recurring revenue, strong liquidity and low customer concentration. Conversely, a borrower above the median can be risky if its cash flow is volatile or its debt is highly concentrated.

For a serious credit analysis, I would triangulate:

Borrower actuals → industry quartiles → peer companies → historical borrower trend → macro/industry outlook.

That combination is much more defensible than quoting an industry average alone.

As a credit analyst, you’ll typically want a mix of industry operating benchmarks, financial ratio data, credit risk indicators, peer comparisons, and macro/sector outlooks. The best sources depend on whether you are analyzing corporate borrowers, middle-market companies, financial institutions, or portfolios.

1. Credit-focused benchmark databases (best for underwriting)

• Risk Management Association — RMA Statement Studies

  • One of the most widely used sources for commercial lending benchmarks.
  • Provides industry financial ratios by NAICS code, including liquidity, leverage, profitability, and turnover metrics for small and midsize borrowers.

• S&P Global — RatingsDirect / Capital IQ

  • Useful for public-company peer analysis, credit ratings, leverage metrics, covenant comparisons, and sector research.

• Moody's Corporation — CreditView

  • Provides credit ratings, financial data, peer benchmarking, and entity-level credit analytics.

• Credit Benchmark

  • Useful for anonymized credit consensus data, industry credit trends, and benchmarking against financial institution views.

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2. Industry research and operating benchmarks

• IBISWorld

  • Good for industry structure, market size, growth rates, cost structures, margins, competitive landscape, and industry financial ratios. Its benchmarks draw from sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau and IRS data.

• U.S. Census Bureau

  • Free source for industry-level data:
    • revenue
    • employment
    • number of firms
    • wages
    • establishment counts
  • Particularly useful for validating borrower claims against industry norms.

• Trade associations

  • Often provide the best niche benchmarks (for example, trucking utilization, hospital margins, construction backlogs, restaurant sales metrics).
  • Look for:
    • annual operating surveys
    • cost studies
    • member benchmarking reports

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3. Public-company and market data sources

• Bloomberg

  • Strong for:
    • bond spreads
    • comparable companies
    • debt maturities
    • market pricing
    • sector news

• FactSet

  • Useful for:
    • peer groups
    • estimates
    • credit metrics
    • sector dashboards

• LSEG Workspace

  • Useful for financial statements, industry research, and comparable-company analysis.

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4. Government and regulatory sources (free, high reliability)

• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR

  • Primary source for borrower filings:
    • 10-Ks
    • 10-Qs
    • debt disclosures
    • risk factors
    • covenant information

• Federal Reserve System

  • Useful for:
    • lending standards
    • economic conditions
    • industry credit trends

• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

  • Useful for banking-sector credit data and financial institution analysis.

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5. Credit portfolio and default-risk benchmarks

For portfolio-level risk analysis:

• Fitch Ratings

  • Provides sector research, credit trends, default studies, and macroeconomic data.

• Moody's Corporation and S&P Global

  • Common sources for:
    • default rates
    • rating migration
    • recovery rates
    • industry outlooks

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A practical credit analyst workflow

A common approach is:

1. Understand the industry

   • IBISWorld, Census, trade associations

2. Benchmark borrower financials

   • RMA Statement Studies (private companies)
   • S&P Capital IQ / Bloomberg / FactSet (public peers)

3. Assess credit risk

   • Moody’s, S&P, Fitch research
   • default and rating migration data

4. Validate assumptions

   • SEC filings
   • management commentary
   • industry-specific operating statistics

For middle-market commercial lending, a strong core stack is often RMA Statement Studies + IBISWorld + borrower financial statements + trade association data + rating-agency research.

Finding reliable industry data and benchmarks is essential for financial statement analysis, ratio comparison, and assessing credit risk. Here are the top, authoritative sources where credit analysts typically find industry data and benchmarks:

• Commercial Credit Databases & Reports
  • Risk Management Association (RMA) Annual Statement Studies : The gold standard for financial ratio benchmarks, providing common size balance sheets and income statements organized by NAICS/SIC codes.
  • IBISWorld : Excellent for deep-dive industry market research reports, including key statistics, market share, and operating ratios.
  • Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) : Offers comprehensive business credit reports and industry risk scores, alongside benchmark financial analytics.
  • Vertical IQ : Specializes in industry intelligence and financial benchmarks tailored specifically for commercial banking and credit analysis.
• Public Filings & Market Data
  • SEC EDGAR : Essential for benchmarking a specific company against direct publicly traded competitors by pulling their 10-K filings.
  • Capital IQ (S&P Global) / Bloomberg : Professional financial platforms used to run custom peer group analyses and pull detailed sector metrics.
• Government & Economic Data
  • U.S. Census Bureau (Quarterly Financial Report) : Provides aggregate financial statistics for manufacturing, mining, trade, and selected service industries.
  • Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) : Helpful for tracking macroeconomic employment, wage, and productivity trends affecting specific sectors.

Would you like help finding benchmarks for a specific industry , or are you looking for guidance on how to analyze a particular financial ratio?

For a credit analyst, I’d build your industry benchmarking from several layers rather than relying on one database. The best source depends on whether you’re analyzing a small/private borrower, middle-market company, or public issuer.

1. RMA is probably the first place I'd look

For traditional commercial lending, RMA's Annual Statement Studies is particularly useful because its data comes from financial statements of borrowers and prospects of RMA member financial institutions. It provides industry financial ratios and common-size financial information across hundreds of industries.

You can use it to benchmark things such as:

• Current ratio
• Quick ratio
• Debt-to-worth
• Total liabilities / assets
• Gross margin
• Operating margin
• ROA / ROE
• Sales-to-assets
• Inventory and receivables turnover
• Working-capital requirements
• Cash-flow measures
• Default probabilities

One important caveat: don't treat an RMA median as a pass/fail credit threshold. RMA itself cautions that differences in geography, accounting methods, operating models, financing structure and sample size can make industry composites imperfect representations of an individual company.

2. Use EDGAR for your actual peer set

For a public borrower, go directly to the SEC EDGAR filing search. It's free and lets you search filings by company, ticker, CIK and SIC code.

For credit analysis, I would pull from the 10-K and 10-Q, not just standardized financial data. The footnotes often reveal things that ratios don't:

• Debt maturities
• Revolver availability
• Secured vs. unsecured debt
• Lease liabilities
• Pension obligations
• Customer concentration
• Supplier concentration
• Acquisitions
• Covenant restrictions
• Related-party transactions
• Off-balance-sheet commitments
• Segment-level profitability

The SEC also provides XBRL financial-statement data through its APIs, which is useful if you're building a repeatable peer-analysis process.

3. Use Federal Reserve data for the credit cycle

The Federal Reserve data portal is excellent for determining whether a borrower's environment is getting better or worse.

Particularly useful datasets include:

• Commercial-bank loan growth
• Loan delinquency and charge-off rates
• Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey
• Commercial lending terms
• Interest rates
• Industrial production
• Capacity utilization
• Financial accounts

The Fed currently provides downloadable data for commercial-bank charge-offs/delinquencies and lending surveys, among many other datasets.

That's important because a borrower can look fine relative to its industry while the entire industry's credit quality is deteriorating.

4. Add industry-specific operating data

For a strong credit memo, I'd supplement financial ratios with industry KPIs.

For example:

• Manufacturing: capacity utilization, backlog, orders, inventory days
• Retail: same-store sales, inventory turns, sales/sq. ft.
• Construction: backlog, book-to-bill, contract mix, WIP
• Hotels: RevPAR, occupancy, ADR
• Restaurants: same-store sales, traffic, unit economics
• Transportation: revenue/load, utilization, fuel costs
• Healthcare: payer mix, admissions, reimbursement rates
• SaaS: ARR, net retention, CAC, gross retention, recurring revenue

For these, industry associations, government datasets, company filings and specialized industry databases can be more informative than generic financial ratios.

A practical hierarchy I'd use

For a typical commercial credit analysis, I'd build the benchmark set like this:

1. Borrower financials
↓
2. RMA industry/size benchmarks
↓
3. 3–5 comparable companies
↓
4. Industry operating KPIs
↓
5. Macro/credit-cycle data
↓
6. Historical trend for the borrower

The key is to answer not simply "Is this company's leverage high?", but:

Is leverage high relative to similarly sized companies in the same industry, is it trending in the right direction, and is the industry's ability to support that leverage improving or deteriorating?

That produces a much stronger credit conclusion than comparing a handful of ratios to generic benchmarks.

If you're building a credit analyst's industry-data toolkit, I can also give you a practical breakdown of the best free vs. paid sources, what each costs, and which ones are worth having for commercial banking vs. corporate credit vs. private-credit analysis.

As a credit analyst, having access to reliable, up-to-date industry benchmarks is critical for evaluating financial health, cash flow adequacy, and leverage ratios against peer groups.

Here are the most trusted sources for industry data and benchmarks, categorized by type:

• Commercial Credit & Financial Benchmarks (Private/SME Focus)
  • Risk Management Association (RMA) Annual Statement Studies : The gold standard for commercial banking and credit analysis. It provides financial ratio benchmarks (liquidity, leverage, turnover, profitability) sorted by NAICS/SIC codes and asset/sales size categories.
  • IBISWorld : Excellent for industry overviews, structural analysis, life cycle stages, and key financial ratios/driver data for specific industries.
  • Vertical IQ : Tailored specifically for commercial lenders and credit analysts, offering industry profiles, financial benchmarks, credit risk considerations, and local market drivers.
• Macroeconomic, Market Research & Public Data
  • S&P Capital IQ / Moody's Analytics / Fitch Ratings : Essential for corporate credit analysis, offering default studies, credit outlooks, bond yield spreads, and peer comparison tools for mid-to-large-cap corporate entities.
  • Damodaran Online (Stern School of Business at NYU) : Maintained by Professor Aswath Damodaran, this is a legendary, free resource providing global data on margins, returns on capital, debt-to-equity ratios, and beta by industry sector, updated annually.
  • U.S. Census Bureau (Economic Census / Quarterly Financial Report) : Provides aggregate statistics on manufacturing, mining, trade, and service sectors, including baseline financial statement data for U.S. corporations.
• Specialized & Regulatory Data Sources
  • Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) : Great for macroeconomic indicators, delinquency rates on loans, interest rate benchmarks, and sector-specific credit trends.
  • Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) : Helpful for analyzing labor cost pressures and productivity trends within specific industries.
  • SEC EDGAR : The ultimate repository for public company filings. You can pull 10-Ks of direct public competitors to build custom peer group comparisons and bespoke financial models.

Would you like to narrow this down based on a specific industry sector (e.g., manufacturing, tech, construction) or do you need recommendations on how to map NAICS codes to these benchmarks?

As a credit analyst, having access to reliable, up-to-date industry benchmarks and financial ratios is critical for assessing borrower risk, debt-service capacity, and industry positioning.

Here is a categorized breakdown of the most reliable sources for industry data and benchmarks:

• Commercial Credit & Financial Benchmarks
  • Risk Management Association (RMA) : The gold standard for commercial banking. The RMA Annual Statement Studies provides financial ratio benchmarks (liquidity, leverage, profitability) categorized by N A I C S cap N cap A cap I cap C cap S𝑁𝐴𝐼𝐶𝑆 or S I C cap S cap I cap C𝑆𝐼𝐶 codes, segmented by asset/sales size ranges.
  • IBISWorld : Excellent for deep-dive industry reports. Provides critical operating ratios, cost structures, market share data, and 5-year outlooks that help evaluate macroeconomic industry health.
  • Statista : Great for high-level market data, industry revenue trends, consumer behavior, and broad economic metrics across global markets.
• Public Filings & Peer Group Analysis
  • SEC EDGAR : Essential for benchmarking a private or middle-market company against its publicly traded competitors. You can pull 10-Ks to calculate custom peer group ratios for cash flow, leverage, and margins.
  • Capital IQ (S&P Global) / Bloomberg / FactSet : Institutional platforms that allow you to screen for peer groups, pull automated comps, and analyze market-implied credit metrics, bond yields, and capital structures.
• Economic, Credit Rating & Macro Data
  • Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) : Maintained by the St. Louis Fed, providing vast macroeconomic data, industry capacity utilization, delinquency rates, and interest rate benchmarks.
  • S&P Global Ratings / Moody's / Fitch : Rating agency default studies, sector outlooks, and median financial ratios by rating category (A A A cap A cap A cap A𝐴𝐴𝐴 to C C C cap C cap C cap C𝐶𝐶𝐶). These act as a benchmark for what financial profile a specific rating tier requires.
• Specialized & Small Business Data
  • Vertical IQ : Tailored specifically for commercial lenders and credit analysts, offering industry profiles, call prep questions, and local market data for niche industries and small-to-medium enterprises (S M E cap S cap M cap E𝑆𝑀𝐸).
  • BizMiner : Provides granular industry financial benchmarks, failure rates, and startup metrics segmented by local geographic areas (national, state, metro) and business size.

If you'd like, let me know:

• What type of industry or borrower (SME, large corporate, specialized sector) you are currently analyzing
• Whether you have access to subscription databases (like Capital IQ/IBISWorld) or need free/public sources

I can narrow down the best specific tool for your workflow.

If you're doing commercial credit analysis, I’d build your industry research around a hierarchy of sources rather than relying on one database.

Best sources by use case

What I would actually use in a credit memo

For a typical middle-market borrower, I'd triangulate three layers:

1. Financial benchmark — "How does the borrower compare?"

Start with RMA. Look at:

• Gross margin
• EBITDA/operating margin
• Current ratio
• Debt-to-net-worth
• Total liabilities/net worth
• Fixed-asset turnover
• Sales/working-capital
• Debt-service coverage
• Cash-flow measures
• Size/industry percentile ranges

RMA is particularly valuable because its data is based on actual borrower financial statements rather than purely on publicly traded companies. Its published methodology describes more than 182,000 statements across 622+ industries in the 2023–24 edition.

2. Industry fundamentals — "Why should these numbers look like this?"

Use IBISWorld, trade associations, government statistics and industry publications.

For example, if you're underwriting a trucking company, don't stop at a 5% EBITDA margin benchmark. Investigate:

• Spot vs. contract freight rates
• Diesel prices
• Driver wages
• Fleet utilization
• Age of equipment
• Maintenance costs
• Freight volumes
• Industry capacity

That tells you whether the borrower's margin is structurally sustainable or simply benefiting from a favorable part of the cycle.

3. Peer/company analysis — "Who is the borrower really competing with?"

For larger companies, use Capital IQ, FactSet, Bloomberg or SEC filings to build a peer set.

I'd compare:

Revenue growth → gross margin → EBITDA margin → leverage → interest coverage → cash conversion → capex → working-capital intensity

The important thing is to avoid comparing a private middle-market company with an inappropriate group of huge public companies. Business model, size, geography and accounting treatment matter as much as NAICS code.

A particularly useful credit-analysis trick

Don't just ask "Is the borrower above or below the industry average?"

Instead, create a benchmark stack:

Borrower → RMA industry quartiles → 5–10 closest public/private peers → Industry historical range → Current industry conditions

For example:

EBITDA margin: 11.2%
RMA industry median: 8.5%
Comparable peers: 9.0–12.0%
Five-year industry range: 7.5–10.5%

That tells you something much more useful than simply saying "the company's margin is above average." It also raises the next credit question: why is this borrower outperforming the industry, and is that advantage sustainable?

Free/low-cost approach

If you don't have expensive institutional subscriptions, I'd start with:

1. SEC EDGAR — borrower/peer filings
2. RMA — if your employer has access
3. IBISWorld — if your employer has access
4. FRED / Federal Reserve — macro and credit conditions
5. Census Bureau — industry statistics
6. Trade associations — operating KPIs
7. Company annual reports/investor presentations — peer benchmarking

The key is source quality + comparability, not the sheer number of databases.

If you're specifically doing commercial/middle-market lending, RMA + IBISWorld + primary filings is probably the most practical combination. If you're doing leveraged finance/corporate credit, I'd shift more heavily toward Capital IQ/FactSet/Bloomberg + ratings-agency research + bond/loan-market data.