On 20 May 2019, the Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) published its latest amendment to the Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on the mapping of credit assessments of External Credit Assessment Institutions (ECAIs) for credit risk under the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR).

The Implementing Regulation on the mapping of ECAIs under the CRR, adopted by the European Commission on 7 October 2016, specified an approach that establishes the correspondence between credit ratings and the credit quality steps (CQS) defined in the CRR, together with providing mappings for 26 ECAIs.

This latest amendment to the ITS reflects the outcome of a monitoring exercise on the adequacy of the mappings, based on the additional quantitative and qualitative information collected after the original Implementing Regulation entered into force. In particular, the ESAs proposed to change the CQS allocation for two ECAIs, and to introduce new credit rating scales for ten ECAIs. The ESAs also addressed the mappings of CRAs recently registered in accordance to the CRA Regulation and that are related to previously mapped ECAIs.