The overall purpose of the paper is to see how crediting institutions assess risks in emerging market countries. The paper describes prevalent economic and social conditions for each of the selected emerging market countries (Brazil, China, Kazakhstan, India, Russia and Ukraine) as examples of recent attractive investment locations in quest of higher returns.  Second, recognizing the importance of ratings for risk management in credit institutions, the authors show what determines country ratings made by main rating agencies by running a linear regression on several macroeconomic indicators and the country ratings. It is also explained what the most widely-used ratings mean and described the correlation between the ratings as well as between the macroeconomic indicators and the ratings. The authors also describe the characteristic approach of a Scandinavian bank towards dealing with risk factors in emerging market countries. Concluding comments: risks happen to be inbound in the bank interest rates; there is no common pattern for banks to apply to all the emerging market countries and each market should be analyzed separately. Nordic banks have a relatively safe and careful strategy concerning lending in the emerging markets.