Raiffeisen Banking Group (RBG) and its core subsidiary Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) have improved their cushion significantly against difficult markets characterized by inflationary pressures and the high risk related to RBI's Russian subsidiary. We therefore affirmed our 'A-' long-term and 'A-2' short-term issuer credit ratings on RBI. The unchanged negative outlook reflects our view that RBG faces several downside risks in the coming 12-24 months, due to geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges across its countries of operation and RBI's Russian subsidiary. We maintained our approach to notching down RBI's additional tier 1 (AT1) instruments from our group-supported issuer credit rating, but introduced a further negative notch to reflect additional nonpayment risks. We therefore lowered our ratings on RBI's regulatory AT1 instruments
