Rate the Room: The early history of rating credit in America

Very interesting how intuitive the need for credit agencies is when presented this way. They get a lot of (justifiable) hate today, but in a low/slow information world, it makes complete sense for there to be value in someone aggregating credit assessments. If you were going to do a deal with somebody back then it's not like you could just google them.

What do credit agencies add to the value chain in the digital age? Are they just glorified data brokers at this point? It makes sense for there to be value in someone mediating the data exchange between financial entities, but I'd expect them to occupy a similar space to financial market brokers rather than these high profile companies playing shell games with data, trying upsell you, and constantly getting hacked. With the proliferation of machine learning expertise their modeling/data knowledge is less valuable than it once was. Have they just stuck around due to inertia/regulatory capture? What's the end state here? Maybe someone more familiar with the industry could chime in, I've only had passing professional experience dealing with the big 3 agencies.