Wall Street’s three major credit rating agencies have agreed to change the way they’re paid to evaluate debt instruments linked to the housing crisis.

The three agencies – Moody’s Investors Service, Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s – have been criticized for giving overly positive ratings to pools of home loans that have since collapsed. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo – who’s behind the settlement – has blamed their compensation system, which he described as full of conflicts.

The current payment system creates an “incentive to come up with a certain rating so that the transaction is successful,” Cuomo said yesterday at a news conference.

But not everyone agrees the reform will help.

Egan-Jones Ratings – a rating agency that’s paid by the buyers of debt rather than the sellers – issued a statement saying the settlement “does nothing more that rearrange the manner and means whereby these payments are made.”