The gap in pharmaceutical due diligence
Due diligence on a pharmaceutical asset routinely covers the science, the regulatory path, the intellectual property, and the finances. Market access — whether payers actually reimburse the product, at what price, and for which population — is often the least systematically examined driver of value.
Regulatory approval clears the first gate. Reimbursement is the second — and it is where deal value and launch plans are most often lost. Internal forecasts tend to overestimate reimbursement outcomes, and without an external reference point, due diligence can harden into structured groupthink.
Market access due diligence closes that gap: it examines the second gate with the same discipline the first one already receives.
A rating, not a consulting project
MARA’s contribution to market access due diligence is a rating — the equivalent of a credit rating for medicines — not a consulting project.
The MARA Rating® is an independent, standardized assessment of pharmaceutical market-access and reimbursement risk. Every asset is evaluated with the same method: ten payer-relevant domains, structured committee judgment, public and verifiable evidence only, calibration against historical HTA decisions. The same asset receives the same rating, whoever requests it.
The result is a single, comparable rating band (A++ to C), dated before the decision it precedes, with drivers and rationale documented. It is a standardized risk signal, not an advisory opinion — and once placed on the record, it stays there.
What the rating adds to a due diligence process
An independent benchmark. Internal access assumptions are validated — or challenged — against a standard that does not depend on the deal team’s own conviction.
Comparability. Targets can be compared on market-access risk across therapeutic areas and over time, on one scale.
A defensible record. If the decision is challenged later — by a board, an investment committee, a lender, or a court — the file shows that an independent, dated reimbursement-risk benchmark was relied upon.
Before the next high-stakes decision, one question is worth asking: if it is challenged later, what independent benchmark did it rest on?
Where it is used
- Buy-side M&A and licensing due diligence on late-stage or marketed assets
- Venture and growth investment decisions from Phase 2 onward
- Credit and royalty transactions where reimbursement carries the repayment
- Board and investment-committee reviews of access assumptions
- LP and fiduciary oversight of fund-level diligence standards
How to include the MARA Rating in your process
Commission a rating for a specific asset. A full committee-based MARA Rating of a defined drug–indication pair, delivered for a fixed fee that is never contingent on the grade or on any transaction, on a fast, defined timeline. Contact us for terms and scheduling.
Use the published catalogue. Hundreds of MARA Ratings with as-of dates are available for immediate use in screening and benchmarking — browse the ratings catalogue or the full A–Z index, and see what a MARA report looks like before you start.
Make it a named workstream. Advisory firms and diligence providers integrate the rating as a standing item in their due diligence checklists — the independent market-access check alongside the legal, financial, and clinical ones.
New to ratings? Start with What is a MARA Rating?, or see how an independent rating differs from a consulting assessment.
For disease-level views of reimbursement risk, see MARA’s coverage in IgA nephropathy and in obesity.