Bank of Montreal has dropped Standard & Poor’s from its covered bond programme, but retains three ratings for its issuance given that Canadian issuers typically employ DBRS alongside Moody’s and Fitch.

Standard & Poor’s affirmed its AAA rating on stable outlook of BMO’s programme before withdrawing it last Friday (23 September). The rating agency said that the rating was withdrawn at the issuer’s request.

A BMO official told The Covered Bond Report that the decision to remove S&P was solely based on “cost and operational ease associated with maintaining the covered bond programme”. He pointed out that four of six other Canadian covered bond programmes use three rating agencies.

“We felt aligning with the majority of our peers was appropriate and continued to position the bank to be able to access this important market,” he said.

Moody’s, Fitch and DBRS rate BMO’s programme triple-A.