(The following statement was released by the rating agency)
Oct 17 –
Overview
— On Oct. 12, 2012, we lowered the Republic of South Africa’s long-term
local and foreign currency sovereign credit ratings to ‘A-‘ and ‘BBB’,
respectively.
— Under our criteria, we generally cap the ratings on insurers with a
material direct exposure to a sovereign at the level of the sovereign local
currency rating.
— We are therefore revising the outlook on Santam Ltd. to negative from
stable, reflecting that on the sovereign.
— At the same time, we are affirming the ‘A-‘ ratings and raising the
national scale rating to ‘zaAA+’ from ‘zaAA’ following publication of revised
mapping guidelines for the South African national credit rating scale.
Rating Action
Continued…
