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inContact is One of America's 100 Most Trustworthy Companies

By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor

With an unsettling amount of corporate controversies, bailouts and bankruptcies over the recent years, investors have lost trust in some the country’s largest public companies. But, there are also many corporations that are models of business integrity. To identify the most trustworthy businesses, Forbes turned to GMI Ratings (GMI), a provider of application of risk measures for financial analysis.

GMI’s analysis looks beyond the data on companies’ income statements and balance sheets to assess the quality of corporate accounting and management practices. In order to rank companies from the most to the least trustworthy, GMI looked at more than 60 governance and forensic accounting measures.

“Those companies that persistently display the most accounting transparency; have the lowest incidence of high-risk events; and have appropriate Board supervision are typically ranked the highest. Companies on this list reflect these practices,” said GMI vice chair and chief executive James A. Kaplan, in a statement.

For the sixth consecutive year, GMI has provided Forbes with a list of the most trustworthy companies in the U.S. And, GMI finds that its 100 Most Trustworthy Companies have consistently demonstrated transparent and conservative accounting practices and solid corporate governance. To qualify, the 100 companies all had to have market caps of $250 million or more at the time GMI prepared the list. 

In addition, over the last four quarters the companies must have maintained AGR ratings of “conservative” or “average,” and had no amended filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, no SEC (News - Alert) enforcement actions, and no material restatements. They also had to rank high in GMI’s Equity Risk Ranking, indicating a positive forecast for equity returns.

One provider of cloud contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools, inContact, has made the 100 Most Trustworthy list. Today, inContact works to help organizations around the world create quality customer experiences. It is focused on the cloud and is the only provider to combine cloud software with an enterprise-class telecommunications network for a complete solution.

“There are two unique factors to this list,” Kaplan explained. “First of all, it is compiled using a different set of tools. AGR uses governance and forensic accounting measures that are rarely incorporated in traditional analysis. These extra-financial measures are, in our view, an important factor in trying to understand value. Secondly, to our knowledge there are no other lists that focus on the trustworthiness of a business.”

He said there is a lot of evidence to support the fact that the cost of capital for the most trustworthy companies is lower because their level of transparency is recognized in the marketplace.

Kaplan continued, “We have also found evidence that, on balance, the most trustworthy companies outperform their peers over the long term.”