No immediate risk on APAC banks

Fitch also assured that APAC’s banks do not have an immediate direct rating impact from the Brexit fallout as the risks are more indirect than direct. 

“But emerging Asia accounts for less than 15 percent of the total external claims of UK banks, according to BIS data. 

Singapore and Hong Kong, as offshore financial centres, are more significantly exposed relative to the size of their economies, but these are mainly local/regional claims from UK subsidiaries and unlikely to see significant withdrawal as a result of Brexitm”, Colquhoun said. 

It was only last week Fitch downgraded National Development Bank PLC (NDB) due to its declining capital adequacy levels in line with its continued strong loan growth and weaker profitability and revised the outlook of Sampath Bank PLC and DFCC Bank PLC to ‘negative’ from ‘stable’ a day prior to Brexit results were known.