The ratings on Cuscal Ltd. reflect its principal position as a service provider to the Australian credit union sector, very good asset quality, and its strong liquidity and funding profile. Moderating these factors is Cuscal's history of modest, although improving, absolute earnings, and the low absolute size of its capital base, which limits the company's ability to deal with an unforeseen shock or stress. Cuscal provides a range of products and services to support the operations of credit unions and other financial institutions, and facilitates the industry's voluntary liquidity-support scheme. For the year ended June 30, 2005, Cuscal's net income was A$14.5 million, and it had total assets of A$3.9 billion. Cuscal's underlying earnings (excluding one-off extraordinary items) have progressively
