About Us
Where We Started
MARA Rating Company was formally established in Switzerland in 2025, building on a reimbursement risk assessment practice that dates to 2020. Its partners are former HTA reviewers, payer decision-makers, and investment-bank analysts.
We spent our careers on different sides of the same decision — assessing assets, setting reimbursement, and pricing transactions. From every seat, one pattern held: strong clinical results did not guarantee market access, and the distance between the two was rarely measured before capital was committed.
We answered it the way credit markets once answered default risk — with a disciplined, repeatable rating, built on direct experience across HTA bodies including NICE, ICER, and their EU4 counterparts, and across global payer systems.
Why MARA Rating Exists
Market access is one of the largest drivers of commercial success, and one of the least systematically measured. Internal forecasts tend to overestimate reimbursement outcomes, and without an external reference point, due diligence can harden into structured groupthink.
Regulatory approval clears the first gate. Reimbursement is the second — and it is where deal value and launch plans are most often lost.
MARA Rating® exists to make that second gate measurable. It gives decision-makers an independent benchmark that holds steady across assets, therapeutic areas, and market contexts — so that high-stakes calls rest on a defensible standard, not on internal confidence alone.
Our Principles
Independence
We have nothing to gain from a drug succeeding or failing. The rating says what the evidence says — whoever is paying.
The same method, every time
Every drug gets the same questions, asked the same way. That’s why you can compare two ratings — or four hundred.
Tested against what actually happened
We check our ratings against the decisions payers really made — and the published record stays on the list, dated, hits and misses alike, for anyone to check.
You can see our reasoning
No black box. Every score comes with the evidence and the precedents behind it, so you can follow the logic — or argue with it.
We publish our misses
Anyone can show you their wins. We publish everything, including the calls we got wrong. That’s what makes the rest worth believing.
It stays honest over time
When the evidence changes, the rating changes — by written rules, in the open. Never quietly. Never because a client asked.
Before the next high-stakes decision, one question is worth asking: if it is challenged later, what independent benchmark did it rest on?
How Organizations Use MARA Ratings
Organizations rely on MARA Ratings as an independent, standardized reference in decision situations where capital commitment, portfolio prioritization, or launch risk is evaluated against payer evidence.
Governance & Calibration
MARA Ratings are governed through a documented committee charter, defined rating actions, and periodic calibration against historical payer decisions. This ensures consistency, comparability, and defensibility over time.