公司的信用評等對於資本決策有遠大的影響。本篇文章主要是藉由英國壽險公司，來探討公司的資金決策與信用評等之間的關連。我們利用聯立方程組模型與二階段迴歸分析來研究公司的信評變數:信用評等，資本決策變數:資本結構和衍生性金融商品使用，此三變數之間的相互關係，藉此降低內生性並得知其實際相互影響。
在信用評等方程式中，我發現財務槓桿越高的公司越容易有較低的評等，與之前文獻一致，而使用越多衍生性金融商品的公司，則被發現能有較高的評比，這也支持了衍生性金融商品能降低風險的假說。在槓桿方程式中，我們則發現高評等的公司越會傾向越高的財務槓桿。最後，在衍生性金融商品方程式中，高信評的公司較傾向使用衍生性金融商品，而高槓桿的公司則被發現使用較少的衍生性金融商品。

The credit rating levels can have significant impact on insurers’ capital decision-making. In this paper, I investigate the relationship of rating levels and capital decision-making variables, leverage and derivative use for UK life insurers. Thus I construct the three equations, rating, leverage and derivative use equation, and utilize the simultaneous equations model to run 2SLS to eliminate the endogeneity problem and try to see the true impact for those variables.
In the rating equation, I find that highly leveraged firms will have lower rating like previous literatures, while firms with high derivative use will get higher rating which suggests derivative can reduce the risk firms have. On the other hand, on leverage equation, higher rating firms are found to have higher leverage. Finally, in derivative use equation, higher rating firms are more likely to utilize derivative to prevent rating downgrade, while highly leveraged firms are reported to use less derivative.

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