S&P Revising Criteria for RMBS with Pre-2009 Collateral

Standard & Poor’s Thursday said it has released revised criteria for monitoring the performance of existing U.S. RMBS and will be using it to rate deals with collateral originated before 2009.
 
S&P said as a result of the application of the new criteria it expects that within this group of deals there will be “significant number” of new rating changes and “proportionately more…downgrades than upgrades.”
 
“We also expect the rating actions for this sample to exhibit a more negative bias than for the portfolio as a whole,” the ratings agency said.
 
Based on preliminary results from an impact study of 512 transactions representing about 10% of the deals affected, S&P said it anticipates about 68% of ratings will remain within three notches of their current rating.