Royal Bank of Canada has dropped Standard & Poor’s from its covered bonds, with the agency having affirmed its triple-A rating of the Canadian issuer’s programme before withdrawing the rating.

S&P said yesterday (Monday) that it has withdrawn the rating of RBC’s covered bond programme upon the issuer’s request.

It affirmed its AAA rating of the programme, on stable outlook. S&P rates RBC AA- and, with six notches of uplift above this possible under the rating agency’s analysis of the programme, the rating had three notches of unused uplift.

Moody’s, Fitch and DRBS rate RBC covered bonds triple-A and all have stable outlooks for their ratings of the issuer, which are Aa3/AA/AA.