Scope Ratings has assigned its third public solicited covered bond rating and its first in France, rating the obligations foncières (OFs) of Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) triple-A today (Tuesday), and sees the potential for more in light of a pipeline of privately solicited ratings.

Scope announced its first public solicited rating last May, for Germany’s Dexia Kommunalbank Deutschland, and followed up with a rating for Bankia in Spain in July, making the CFF rating its third public solicited rating.

“We have, however, provided several solicited private ratings already and we have at the moment a nice pipeline of solicited covered bond mandates with the potential to turn public,” Guillaume Jolivet, managing director and head of structured finance ratings at Scope, told The CBR. “We perceive a strong interest from the market for a European approach to covered bond ratings.”

The Crédit Foncier de France subsidiary’s covered bonds were rated AAA (stable), while the parent and subsidiary were both assigned bank ratings of AA- (stable).

“The covered bond ratings are primarily based on the fundamental support factors applicable to the OFs, reflecting the strong investor protection provided by the French covered bond legal framework and the benefits from the resolution-regime analysis,” said Scope. “Although the covered bonds only need an uplift of three notches from the issuer rating to reach AAA, the fundamental credit differentiation already provides higher support of up to six notches for the covered bonds.

“In addition, the covered bonds benefit from a pool of high-quality, low-credit-risk cover assets that are funded with minimal mismatch risk. The result of the cover pool analysis provides additional rating stability, as it supports at least the same rating uplift and the Stable Outlook.”

The rating agency also today announced that it had gained its first big German bank as a client, Commerzbank, assigning it an A Issuer Credit Strength Rating and A- to its senior unsecured debt. Commerzbank’s mortgage and public sector Pfandbriefe were assigned unsolicited triple-A ratings when Scope announced its first ratings of covered bonds, all on an unsolicited basis, in September 2015.

“In the European blue-chip segment, Scope has made substantial progress over a short period of time,” said Torsten Hinrichs, CEO of Scope Ratings. “The mandates from Commerzbank and Crédit Foncier show that our recent successes also extend to the banking segment.

“We intend to further develop our presence among large European corporates and financial institutions. To do this, Scope is directing investment, among other things, towards markets such as France, Italy and Spain.”