Moody’s yesterday (Tuesday) assigned a Aa2 rating to mortgage covered bonds issued by Bawag PSK, but David Sperlich, head of capital market solutions at the bank, told The Covered Bond Report that Bawag has no immediate plans to issue publically.

The Austrian bank issued a private placement ahead of being rated by Moody’s, according to Sperlich.

“We have no plans at the moment to issue a larger, public transaction,” he said, adding that the issuer’s strategy was to use the pool for public and private deals.

“We are largely retail funded, so if the overall market is not good, we will not access the market, but if the spread is good and we feel comfortable, we may choose to issue,” he said.

Moody’s put the total value of the assets in the cover pool at Eu708m, with 73.4% residential borrowers and 26.6% commercial borrowers, primarily in Vienna, Lower Austria, and Styria.

“The cover pool will continue to grow,” said Sperlich. “We are one of the largest mortgage lenders in Austria; we have a large number of residential and commercial mortgages, so we have a lot of loans to put through this manual process and see if they fit in our cover pool.”

Moody’s noted the issuer must maintain a 12.5% minimum overcollateralisation, of which 5.5% is provided in committed form.

Based on a Timely Payment Indicator (TPI) of “probable”, and Bawag’s Baa2 rating, the TPI leeway on the covered bonds is zero notches.

Bawag two weeks ago bought back 3.5% of a Eu1bn 2014 public sector covered bond.