...Standard & Poor's Ratings Services' outlook on Finland-based credit institution The Mortgage Society of Finland (Suomen Hypoteekkiyhdistys [Hypo], or the bank) is negative, reflecting our view that the weak economic recovery in Finland's export-oriented economy could adversely affect the Finnish banking sector's performance in the next two years. This could lead us to revise down our anchor for Finnish banks, including Hypo, to '###+' from 'a-', which in turn would likely prompt us to lower our long-term rating on Hypo. In addition, we could downgrade Hypo if it unexpectedly changed its current conservative lending policies, leading to weakening of its asset quality and ensuing credit losses. We could also take a negative rating action if Hypo increased its business growth more aggressively than we assume and failed to maintain its "very strong" capital and earnings in line with our expectations. We might revise the outlook to stable if we saw an improvement in the Finnish economy and continued...
