Credit Rating Standardization Study

The Securities and Exchange Commission is requesting public comment to help inform its study pursuant to Section 939(h) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 on the feasibility and desirability of: Standardizing credit ratings terminology, so that all credit rating agencies issue credit ratings using identical terms; standardizing the market stress conditions under which ratings are evaluated; requiring a quantitative correspondence between credit ratings and a range of default probabilities and loss expectations under standardized conditions of economic stress; and standardizing credit rating terminology across asset classes, so that named ratings correspond to a standard range of default probabilities and expected losses independent of asset class and issuing entity.