Press Release

DBRS Morningstar Finalises Provisional Rating on Silver Arrow S.A., acting in respect of its Compartment 13

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April 29, 2021

DBRS Ratings GmbH (DBRS Morningstar) finalised its provisional rating of AAA (sf) on the Class A Notes issued by Silver Arrow S.A., acting in respect of its Compartment 13 (the Issuer). The Issuer is a compartment in a public company (société anonyme) with limited liability incorporated under the laws of Luxembourg.

DBRS Morningstar did not assign a rating to the Class B Notes issued in this transaction.

The rating on the Class A Notes addresses the timely payment of interest and the ultimate repayment of principal by the legal maturity date.

The Class A Notes are collateralised by a static portfolio of automotive loan contracts comprising standard amortising and balloon loan receivables. The receivables relate to auto loan contracts granted by Mercedes-Benz Bank AG (MBB or the Seller) to private and commercial borrowers in the Federal Republic of Germany.

MBB is a wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler AG. The underlying receivables relating to balloon loans feature either a mandatory or an optional balloon payment due at the end of the agreement. The optional balloon payment feature allows a borrower to hand back the underlying vehicle at contract maturity to their dealer as an alternative to paying or refinancing the final balloon payment. Under this scenario, the dealer has the responsibility for paying the final instalment. However, the borrower can only turn in the car as long as the dealer is not insolvent and does not have the option to return the vehicle to MBB or the Issuer. The inclusion of balloon loans directly exposes the Issuer to potential additional balloon risk. MBB services the receivables.

The transaction is static and the Class A Notes will begin to amortise on the first interest payment date.

DBRS Morningstar based its rating on a review of the following analytical considerations:
-- The transaction’s capital structure, including form and sufficiency of available credit enhancement;
-- Relevant credit enhancement in the form of subordination, reserve funds, and excess spread;
-- Credit enhancement levels are sufficient to support DBRS Morningstar’s projected cumulative net loss under various stressed cash flow assumptions for the Class A Notes;
-- The ability of the transaction to withstand stressed cash flow assumptions and repay investors according to the terms under which they have invested;
-- MBB’s capabilities with regard to originations, underwriting, servicing, and its financial strength;
-- The transaction parties’ financial strength with regard to their respective roles;
-- The credit quality of the collateral and historical and projected performance of the Seller’s portfolio;
-- The sovereign rating of the Federal Republic of Germany, currently at AAA with a Stable trend; and
-- The consistency of the transaction’s legal structure with DBRS Morningstar’s “Legal Criteria for European Structured Finance Transactions” methodology and the presence of legal opinions that address the true sale of the assets to the Issuer.

TRANSACTION STRUCTURE
The transaction incorporates a single waterfall that facilitates the distribution of the available distribution amount. The notes amortise sequentially subject to a note-specific target principal redemption amount.

A nonamortising general reserve account equal to 0.5% of the portfolio balance at the cut-off date is available to the structure. The general reserve provides liquidity support to the Class A Notes while also ultimately providing credit enhancement to the notes. It is available to repay principal on the notes when the outstanding principal balance of the portfolio reaches zero.

All underlying contracts are fixed rate while floating-rate notes have been issued. The Class A Notes are indexed to one-month Euribor. Interest rate risk for the Class A Notes is mitigated through an interest rate swap provided by DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank (DZ BANK).

DBRS Morningstar analysed the transaction cash flow structure in Intex DealMaker.

COUNTERPARTIES
The Issuer bank account is held at Elavon Financial Services DAC. DBRS Morningstar privately rates Elavon Financial Services DAC and concluded that it meets the minimum criteria to act in its capacity as the account bank. The transaction contains downgrade provisions relating to the account bank consistent with DBRS Morningstar criteria.

DZ BANK is the swap counterparty for the transaction. The DBRS Morningstar Long-Term Issuer Rating on DZ BANK is at AA (low) with a Stable trend. The hedging documents contain downgrade provisions consistent with DBRS Morningstar criteria.

CORONAVIRUS CONSIDERATIONS
The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and the resulting isolation measures have caused an economic contraction, leading to sharp increases in unemployment rates and income reductions for many borrowers. DBRS Morningstar anticipates that delinquencies may continue to increase in the coming months for many structured finance transactions, some meaningfully. The ratings are based on additional analysis and adjustments to expected performance as a result of the global efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. For this transaction, DBRS Morningstar applied a moderate haircut to its expected recovery rate and adjusted expected default rates associated with commercial borrowers.

On 16 April 2020, the DBRS Morningstar Sovereign group released a set of macroeconomic scenarios for the 2020–22 period in select economies. These scenarios were last updated on 17 March 2021. For details, see the following commentaries: https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/375376/global-macroeconomic-scenarios-march-2021-update and https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/359903/global-macroeconomic-scenarios-application-to-credit-ratings. The DBRS Morningstar analysis considered impacts consistent with the moderate scenario in the referenced reports.

On 8 May 2020, DBRS Morningstar published a commentary outlining how the coronavirus crisis is likely to affect DBRS Morningstar-rated ABS transactions in Europe. For more details, please see: https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/360734/european-abs-transactions-risk-exposure-to-coronavirus-covid-19-effect and https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/362712/european-structured-finance-covid-19-credit-risk-exposure-roadmap.

For more information regarding rating methodologies and Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), please see the following DBRS Morningstar press release: https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/357883.

For more information regarding structured finance rating methodologies and Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), please see the following DBRS Morningstar press release: https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/358308.

For more information regarding the structured finance rating approach and Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), please see the following DBRS Morningstar press release: https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/359905.

ESG CONSIDERATIONS
A description of how DBRS Morningstar considers ESG factors within the DBRS Morningstar analytical framework can be found in the DBRS Morningstar Criteria: Approach to Environmental, Social, and Governance Risk Factors in Credit Ratings at https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/373262.

Notes:
All figures are in euros unless otherwise noted.

The principal methodology applicable to the rating is: Rating European Consumer and Commercial Asset-Backed Securitisations (3 September 2020).

Other methodologies referenced in this transaction are listed at the end of this press release. These may be found at: http://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/about/methodologies.

DBRS Morningstar has applied the principal methodology consistently and conducted a review of the transaction in accordance with the principal methodology.

An asset and a cash flow analysis were both conducted.

For a more detailed discussion of the sovereign risk impact on Structured Finance ratings, please refer to “Appendix C: The Impact of Sovereign Ratings on Other DBRS Morningstar Credit Ratings” of the “Global Methodology for Rating Sovereign Governments” at: https://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/364527/global-methodology-for-rating-sovereign-governments.

The sources of data and information used for this rating include MBB and its agent, Unicredit Bank AG.

DBRS Morningstar received the following data and information:
-- Static quarterly cumulative gross loss data from Q4 2015 to Q4 2020 further split into, new/used, and amortising/balloon vehicles for a total of eight subsets;
-- Static quarterly recovery data from Q4 2015 to Q4 2020 further split into, new/used, and amortising/balloon vehicles for a total of eight subsets;
-- Dynamic monthly prepayment data from November 2015 to December 2020;
-- Dynamic delinquency data from November 2015 to December 2020;
-- Dynamic originations from November 2015 to December 2020;
-- Pool stratification tables as at 31 March 2021; and
-- The portfolio amortisation profile related to the selected pool.

DBRS Morningstar did not rely upon third-party due diligence in order to conduct its analysis.

DBRS Morningstar was supplied with third-party assessments. However, this did not impact the rating analysis.

DBRS Morningstar considers the data and information available to it for the purposes of providing this rating to be of satisfactory quality.

DBRS Morningstar does not audit or independently verify the data or information it receives in connection with the rating process.

This rating concerns a newly issued financial instrument. This is the first DBRS Morningstar rating on this financial instrument.

This is the first rating action since the Initial Rating Date.

Information regarding DBRS Morningstar ratings, including definitions, policies, and methodologies, is available on www.dbrsmorningstar.com.

To assess the impact of changing the transaction parameters on the rating, DBRS Morningstar considered the following stress scenarios, as compared with the parameters used to determine the rating:

-- Expected default: 2.2%.
-- Expected recovery rate: 67%.
-- Loss given default (LGD): 56.5% for the AAA (sf) scenario.

DBRS Morningstar concludes that the expected ratings under the eight stress scenarios will be:

-- Class A Notes:
Scenario 1: 25% increase in PD, expected rating of AA (sf)
Scenario 2: 50% increase in PD, expected rating of AA (low) (sf)
Scenario 3: 25% increase in LGD, expected rating of AA (sf)
Scenario 4: 50% increase in LGD, expected rating of AA (sf)
Scenario 5: 25% increase in both PD and LGD expected rating of AA (low) (sf)
Scenario 6: 25% increase in PD and 50% increase in LGD, expected rating of A (high) (sf)
Scenario 7: 50% increase in PD and 25% increase in LGD, expected rating of A (high) (sf)
Scenario 8: 50% increase in both PD and LGD, expected rating of A (sf)

For further information on DBRS Morningstar historical default rates published by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in a central repository, see: http://cerep.esma.europa.eu/cerep-web/statistics/defaults.xhtml. DBRS Morningstar understands further information on DBRS Morningstar historical default rates may be published by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on its webpage: https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/credit-rating-agencies.

These ratings are endorsed by DBRS Ratings Limited for use in the United Kingdom.

Lead Analyst: Guglielmo Panizza, Assistant Vice President
Rating Committee Chair: Christian Aufsatz, Managing Director
Initial Rating Date: 14 April 2021

DBRS Ratings GmbH
Neue Mainzer Straße 75
60311 Frankfurt am Main Deutschland
Tel. +49 (69) 8088 3500
Geschäftsführer: Detlef Scholz
Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main, HRB 110259

The rating methodologies used in the analysis of this transaction can be found at: http://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/about/methodologies.

A description of how DBRS Morningstar analyses structured finance transactions and how the methodologies are collectively applied can be found at: http://www.dbrsmorningstar.com/research/278375.

For more information on this credit or on this industry, visit www.dbrsmorningstar.com or contact us at [email protected].

ALL MORNINGSTAR DBRS RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO DISCLAIMERS AND CERTAIN LIMITATIONS. PLEASE READ THESE DISCLAIMERS AND LIMITATIONS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION REGARDING MORNINGSTAR DBRS RATINGS, INCLUDING DEFINITIONS, POLICIES, RATING SCALES AND METHODOLOGIES.

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