This document presents a study on developing an automated early warning system for credit rating transitions using news sentiment analysis. The objective is to eliminate subjective bias in credit ratings assigned by analysts and provide more real-time ratings. A hybrid model is created using traditional credit rating parameters like financial ratios and economic conditions along with quantified news sentiment scores. The model was backtested on 200 companies and predicted rating transitions with over 95% accuracy, validating the use of sentiment analysis to complement traditional credit rating approaches.