Solid base of stable funding and strong liquidity. Sustaining strong capitalization coupled with stabilizing credit costs and asset quality. Well-established franchise in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East with strong international links. Additional loss-absorbing capacity (ALAC) support for operating banks. Exposed to high economic risk in emerging Asian markets. Slower profitability recovery after internal restructurings amid challenging operating environment. The stable outlook on Standard Chartered PLC (SC PLC) reflects our expectation of only a gradual improvement in the group's profitability over the next two years. We also expect SC PLC the group to sustain, rather than substantially improve, its capitalization, credit losses, and asset quality. We expect the unsupported group credit profile (GCP) of 'a-' to remain unchanged for the
