Moody’s released its latest quarterly monitoring overview today (Monday), making good on a commitment to deliver more timely covered bond data by skipping Q4 2010 and moving straight from the Q3 2010 to Q1 2011. Although mainly comprising data released up to 31 March, the publication also contained references to events underway in Denmark and Portugal.

The rating agency said that it has been focusing on producing more up to date information since its last overview, which was released in April.

“The delay between the publication date of this report and the date the information relates to has halved since the last monitoring report was published,” said Moody’s. “Going forward, Moody’s aims to produce this report within three months of the date the information relates to.

“The production of timely data has also extended to the production of the performance overviews, which are published for every covered bond programme included in this report. Moody’s aims to publish all performance overviews within six weeks from the date the required information is received from the covered bond issuer.”

Since the end of the last quarter Moody’s has revised its assumptions with regard to Danish covered bonds and taken action in relation to several programmes from the country. Data on Danish covered bond programmes in the overview was therefore incomplete, with the rating agency referring to recent releases.

Among the largest changes in aggregate country data given by Moody’s were figures relating to Portuguese covered bond programmes, even though the data relates to a period before the rating agency cut Portugal to junk.

The biggest fall in average surplus overcollateralisation for a country was in Portugal, where the figure fell from 18% to 5%. All Portuguese covered bond programmes were cut by two or three notches in between the ends of Q3 2010 and Q1 2011.