Quarterly rating reports newly-required for covered bonds to be ECB repo-eligible were in almost all cases delivered in time for a first deadline last week, with rating agencies reporting minimal exceptions as efforts on the parts of raters and issuers contributed to a “great achievement”.

The ECB announced in November 2016 that rating agencies will have to meet new reporting standards if their covered bond ratings are to be accepted by the ECB for repo collateral purposes, including that they publish surveillance reports on eligible covered bond programmes no later than eight weeks after the end of each quarter. Rating agencies put the onus on issuers to deliver the quarterly data in time for the eight week deadline to be met, with many market participants and analysts noting that, prior to the new minimum standards being defined, there were often delays in such data gathering.

The new minimum requirements took effect on 1 July and the deadline for the first quarterly release passed on Saturday (25 November).

Fitch announced this (Tuesday) morning that it had, by the deadline, published up-to-date surveillance reports for all but one of the ECB-eligible single issuer covered bond programmes that it rates. This issuer did not deliver the required end-3Q data to Fitch in time, and a report was published for this programme with the most up-to-date data available.

Hélène Heberlein, managing director at Fitch, said the rating agency had received a good response from issuers.

“Certainly I was impressed,” she told The Covered Bond Report. “We did what we could to chase issuers, and it paid off.

“Apart from that one programme, all reports for straight covered bond programmes were published with up-to-date information. That all but one of the issuers delivered information sufficiently in advance of the deadline is a great achievement, compared to previous quarters.”

Reports were not published for some Fitch-rated multi-cédulas programmes by the Saturday deadline, but the missing reports were all published yesterday (Monday). Heberlein noted that reporting on such programmes was more complex given the greater volume of data required.

S&P announced yesterday that it has published new surveillance reports for all of the ECB-eligible covered bond programmes that it rates, except for one programme where the issuer indicated to the rating agency that a report was not necessary. S&P also published reports for all multi-cédulas it rates.

The rating agency added that it is currently reporting information as of Q3 2017 while data covering a longer time period will be available once it publishes future reports.

Moody’s told The CBR it has published 211 ECB-related quarterly reports, including Canadian programmes.

“We consider this an achievement and a successful collaborative effort with issuers,” said Juan Pablo Soriano, managing director, structured finance, Moody’s. “Only a couple of issuers did not engage in this exercise.

“The ultimate decision lies on the issuer’s willingness and capacity to provide the information in a timely fashion. Moody’s endeavours to publish ECB related quarterly reports for all publicly rated covered bonds where the issuer has provided Moody’s with sufficient and timely information for publication.”

DBRS also published up-to-date reports on all relevant programmes by the deadline. Vito Natale, head of covered bonds and surveillance at DBRS, told The CBR that the rating agency is currently exploring the feasibility of producing the same style of reports in the one non-euro-area market in which it rates covered bond programmes – Canada – in the near future.