In our opinion, Salama's liquidity position has improved thanks to the company's efforts to move away from unrated and speculative-grade investments. Although Salama's weighted average asset quality has also improved, it's still below our 'BBB' asset quality category and therefore limits the company's financial risk profile to our less than adequate category. We are affirming our long-term counterparty credit and financial strength ratings on Salama at 'BBB-'. The negative outlook reflects our expectation that Salama's recent earnings volatility and exposure to North African insurance markets, which carry a high industry and country risk, may heighten pressure on its business risk profile over 2017-2018. On Aug. 1, 2017, S&P Global Ratings affirmed its long-term counterparty credit and financial strength ratings on
