Moody's Adds +/- to Servicer Ratings

Citing a significant increase in the number of rated loan servicers and the amount of data the servicers provide to the rating agency, Moody's Investors Service is augmenting its servicer ratings with "plus" and "minus" signs to provide further differentiation.When added to Moody's SQ (servicer quality) ratings, the new plus modifier will indicate that the servicer ranks at the higher end of the designated rating category, while the minus modifier will indicate that a servicer ranks in the lower end of the category, the rating agency said. The changes apply to all Moody's SQ ratings across all asset classes within asset-backed securities and residential mortgage-backed securities. Moody's currently rates more than 40 servicers on a scale from SQ1 (strong) to SQ5 (weak).