...+ On March 18, 2019, S&P Global Ratings revised the trend on its Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment (BICRA) of Brazil to stable from negative, reflecting our opinion that the Brazilian economy will continue to recover in the next two years, supporting banks' efforts to stabilize asset quality metrics and reduce the need for additional provisions. + We also believe asset quality metrics will continue gradually improving, and the risk of them worsening due to renegotiated and restructured loans has decreased. Moreover, recent corruption investigations in the financial sector involved individual cases that didn't affect the system as a whole, and in our view, the risk for systemic contagion from the investigations has diminished. + As a result of the lower downside risk for the sector, we revised the outlook on the issuer credit ratings on nine financial institutions, and at the same time, maintained the stable or negative outlook on five entities....
