Fitch Ratings affirms NCC Foreign and Local Currencies Ratings at «BBB», Viability Rating at «bbb»
Fitch Ratings affirmed Central Counterparty National Clearing Centre's (NCC) Foreign Currency (FC) and Local Currency (LC) Long Term Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) at 'BBB', the Outlooks on both ratings are Stable. The agency has also affirmed NCC's Viability rating (VR) at 'bbb', according to the press-release issued on August 25,2020 by Fitch Ratings on its web site.
“The affirmation of the Ratings to NCC, specifically under current extraordinary and complicated circumstances, signifies NCC’s capability to perform its functions as a reliable CCP. NCC’s Ratings is an important message to market members, indicating the level of Russian financial market infrastructure development”, said Eddi Astanin, Chairman of NCC’s Management Board.
NCC is a central clearing counterparty on all MOEX exchange markets. And, as said in the Fitch Ratings press-release, in its role as an intermediary between market participants, NCC acts as a counterparty for each trade and is ultimately responsible for the performance of trading obligations in case of the failure of one or more of the clearing participants.
The affirmation of the VR, as Fitch Ratings puts it, reflects NCC's exceptionally strong credit profile in the context of the Russian market, based on the entity's intrinsic strength. NCC has a high resilience to potential losses due to sound risk management and controls, the largely short-term nature of its risk exposures, and robust solvency, which is further protected by extra buffers and a loss cap (with any excess loss to be shared between market participants). The VR also reflects NCC's strong liquidity and solid profitability.
The full version of Fitch Ratings’s press release is available on its official website by the link.
