S&P Lifts Ban on Georgia Loans

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services has announced that it will once again allow loans from Georgia into transactions that it rates.The change is a response to the pre-emption by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the assignee liability portion of the Georgia Fair Lending Act for national banks and their subsidiaries. Since the Georgia law was written to allow state-chartered banks and their subsidiaries the same privileges as national ones, S&P will also allow loans originated by these institutions into their pools. This includes high-cost loans, the rating agency said. Earlier restrictions laid out by S&P still apply for originators without national or state banking charters. S&P can be found online at http://www.standardandpoors.com.