Fitch: India's First Offshore Basel III AT1 Issue A Positive

Fitch Ratings-Mumbai/Singapore: A successful cross-border Additional Tier 1 (AT1) issue by State Bank of India (SBI, BBB-/Stable), India's largest bank by assets, would be a positive development for India's banking system, Fitch Ratings says.

The first cross-border deal in the dollar AT1 market from an Indian bank would open up a new source of much-needed regulatory capital and provide a pricing benchmark for other banks keen to access the dollar AT1 market. AT1 issuance by Indian banks has thus far been limited to the domestic market, where both market depth and investor appetite has been lacking.

Fitch estimates that Indian banks will require around USD90bn in new capital by the end of the fiscal year to March 2019 (FYE19) to meet Basel III standards, of which around 30% will be required in AT1. Indian banks have struggled to raise AT1 capital from the local market with issuances since January 2016 raising just USD1.5bn in new AT1 capital.

Fitch would apply its consistent approach of using the banks' Viability Ratings (VRs) as the anchor for notching purposes when assigning ratings to Indian AT1 instruments. Under Fitch's current criteria, these instruments would be rated five notches from the VR. The five notches factor in the risks of both non-performance and loss severity while the use of the VR as the anchor rating confirms that Fitch does not factor in extraordinary state support into the ratings of instruments with going-concern loss-absorption features. This is consistent with the Reserve Bank of India's framework, which requires the permanent write-off of AT1 securities before any extraordinary public-sector injection of funds takes place. (For more details, see Indian Banks: Applying Fitch's Criteria on Basel III Capital Instruments), dated 23 August 2013).

Basel III AT1 instruments are loss-absorbing in nature and will be either converted or written-down once AT1 capital triggers are breached. These are hard triggers requiring banks to maintain minimum Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio of 5.5% until FYE19 and 6.125% thereafter. These instruments feature fully discretionary coupons and an issuer's total capital adequacy ratio, CET1 ratio and Tier 1 ratio need to be above regulatory minimums for it to continue servicing the coupon on its Basel III AT1 instruments.

Fitch believes that the risk of non-performance is highest under fully discretionary coupons as it is the most easily activated form of loss absorption.

Deteriorating financial profiles over the last few years have raised the standalone credit risks of Indian banks adding to capital pressures at a time when progressively higher minimum Basel III capital requirements are being phased in. This was recently highlighted by the coupon skip of Dhanlaxmi Bank's legacy Upper Tier 2 capital instrument.