Bermuda-based CIFG Holding Ltd., the holding company for CIFG's financial guaranty subsidiaries, has formally requested that Fitch Ratings withdraw the Insurer Financial Strength ratings for its affiliated companies: CIFG Guaranty, CIFG Assurance North America Inc. and CIFG Europe.

CIFG believes that Fitch is not in a good position to accurately determine the appropriate capital requirements for CIFG's insured portfolio.

The company said that Fitch rates a smaller portion of the company's insured transactions, currently 33 percent of policies written as compared with more than 70 percent by the other two rating agencies individually.

In particular, it claims that Fitch does not formally rate many of the RMBS (residential mortgage-backed security), ABS (asset-backed security) and CDO (collateralised debt obligation) transactions that it identifies as the source of their greatest concern. Further, Fitch rates less then 30 percent of CIFG's Global Public Finance and Infrastructure transactions, which represent a key part of CIFG future growth strategy.

"The decision to call on Fitch to withdraw CIFG ratings is not directly related to the downgrade to A — (outlook negative) announced yesterday by Fitch. This was a decision we have been considering for some time," stated John Pizzarelli, CEO of CIFG. "While the company continues to work with Moody's and S&P (Standard & Poor's) to address their concerns to upgrade its ratings as soon as possible, CIFG believes achieving higher ratings with Fitch would be impeded by the limitations of that agency's approach to rating financial guaranty companies."

CIFG is rated A1 (stable) by Moody's and A+ (negative outlook) by S&P.