Jules Kroll, a former private investigator who started a bond-rating company after the financial crisis, said the largest credit-rating firms are again putting profits ahead of accuracy amid record demand for corporate debt.

“They're selling themselves out just as they did before,” the chief executive officer of Kroll Bond Rating Agency Inc. said today at a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission roundtable in Washington. “If you want to see the next tsunami, wait for the outcome in high yield and watch what washes up on shore.”

Companies are issuing speculative-grade bonds at a record pace even as yields on the debt have fallen to unprecedented lows with the Federal Reserve holding its benchmark interest rate near zero for a fifth year. Douglas Peterson, president of Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, declined to comment on whether the market is in a “bubble.” Prices reflect excess liquidity, he said in response to a question from SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher.