Next week, Standard&Poor's Ratings Services intends to publish its final criteria for rating banks. Then, likely in late November, we will start applying the new criteria; we aim to finish implementation by the middle of December. We have decided on a relatively short implementation period in response to market participants' feedback. However, we may delay this schedule if a material credit event occurs, the impact of which could take some time to assess. In this article, we explain the process we followed to make these criteria changes, provide information about the ratings impact of the changes, and explain how we intend to publish the ratings assigned under the new criteria. (Watch the related CreditMatters TV segment titled, "Standard