On March 14, 2025, S&P Global Ratings upgraded Saudi Arabia to 'A+' from 'A' reflecting its view that the country's ongoing social and economic transformation is underpinned by improving governance effectiveness and institutional settings, including deepening domestic capital markets. In our view, this will strengthen the government's capacity to extend extraordinary support to systemically important banks in case of need. We view Saudi National Bank (SNB), Al Rajhi Bank (ARB), and Riyad Bank (RB) as highly systemically important banks with stronger intrinsic creditworthiness than other rated Saudi banks. Therefore, we raised our long- and short-term foreign and local currency ratings on SNB, ARB, and RB to 'A/A-1' from 'A-/A-2'. The outlook on these banks is stable. DUBAI (S&P Global Ratings)
