Saudi Arabia: Moody’s Assigns National Scale Ratings to 4 Banks

Saudi Arabia: Moody’s Assigns National Scale Ratings to 4 Banks

These banks are Bank Al-Jazira (Baa1 negative, baa3), Riyad Bank (A2 negative, baa1), Samba Financial Group (A1 negative, a2) and Saudi British Bank (A1 negative, a3).

This rating action follows the publication of new national scale rating map for the government of Saudi Arabia on October 2, 2020.

NSRs provide a measure of relative creditworthiness within a single country, and are derived from global scale ratings (GSRs) using country-specific maps. NSRs are not intended to rank credits across multiple countries; instead they provide a measure of relative creditworthiness within a single country.

Moody's NSRs are given a two-letter suffix to distinguish them from the agency's Global Scale Ratings. For example, NSRs in Saudi Arabia have the country abbreviation "sa".

Ratings rationale

The rationale and key drivers are presented on a bank by bank basis below.

Bank