Scope Ratings AG

Scope Ratings AG is the leading European credit rating agency, offering clients an opinion-driven, forward-looking and non-mechanistic credit risk analysis and contributing to greater diversity of opinions for institutional investors. Scope Ratings provides ratings of financial institutions, corporates, structured finance, covered bonds, project finance and public finance. Scope Ratings is an ESMA-accredited rating agency operating in the European Union with European Credit Assessment Institution (ECAI) status. It is part of the Scope Group, with headquarters in Berlin and offices in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Madrid and Milan.

Structured Finance & Covered Bonds

Scope offers a European alternative to the existing credit agencies by applying rating methodologies that are designed for and from Europe. Our structured finance and covered bond ratings capture the underlying factors that explain why transactions in Europe exhibit a markedly better credit performance than those in the US.

Scope's key analytical difference lies in its customised approach and regional perspective. Scope favours opinion-driven analysis, as opposed to merely applying rigid global criteria and industrialised rating approaches.

Our approach to structured finance and covered bond ratings results in high credit differentiation because:

1. Our methodology offers rating stability by adjusting assumptions for long-term local references and strong forward-looking fundamental views.
2. We apply a bottom-up analytical approach that considers transactions in their individual context. Scope can therefore analyse a transaction without bias; for instance without mechanistic caps or one-size-fits-all assumptions.
3. We use a post-crisis counterparty risk approach that reflects the more robust credit quality of European banks after the implementation of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD).

Scope currently rates and monitors issuances of over EUR 100bn of European structured finance debt securities and over approx EUR 500bn of covered bonds – and Scope's rating coverage continues to increase rapidly. Rated transactions include covered bonds, SME and auto ABS, CMBS, RMBS as well as the securitisations of leases, trade receivables and alternative investment funds. Scope also analyses a number of European infrastructure and project finance transactions