Structured Finance Deals: A Review of the Rating Process and Recent Evidence Thereof

Abstract

The pooling and tranching of assets into prioritized cash-flow claims has become a substantial source of revenue for issuers as well as rating agencies in the last decade. With the recent demise of vehicles used to operationalize these structured deals, a natural question arises as to the quality of standards applied in structuring, managing, and ultimately rating these products. The purpose of this paper is to review rating practices in the area of structured finance, and to summarize the research and empirical evidence pertaining to these questions.

Keywords: structured finance, credit rating agencies, rating standards

JEL Classification: G2, G24