By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Seven Nigerian banks have received the National Scale Ratings (NSRs) by world’s rating agency, Moody’s Investors Services.
The financial institutions are the Bank of Industry (BoI), GTBank, Zenith Bank, Access Bank, First Bank, United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) and Sterling Bank.
A statement from Moody’s noted that this rating action follows the publication of new national scale rating maps for Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco, which provide a measure of relative creditworthiness within a single country; and are derived from global scale ratings using country-specific maps.
An A1.ng/NG-1 national scale local currency deposit ratings was assigned to Sterling Bank as well as an A2.ng/NG-1 national scale foreign currency deposit ratings.
The agency explained that these ratings were underpinned by a standalone baseline credit assessment (BCA) of b3 and one notch of government support uplift, which results in a global scale long-term issuer and deposit rating of B2.
“The A1.ng rating is the second highest of three national scale ratings categories corresponding to the bank’s local currency deposit global scale ratings.
“Sterling Bank’s national scale ratings capture the bank’s solid asset quality metrics (reported non-performing loans ratio of 2.8 per cent as at end-June 2016 versus 11.7 per cent for the banking system), provision coverage and solid deposit funding base,” it was explained.
Dipo Olowookere 
Aduragbemi Omiyale