Letter of Credit & Credit Rating

Standby Letter of Credit

A Standby Letter of Credit is a guarantee of payment issued by a financial institution to a third party against a contractual commitment of a product and/or service by UBC. Treasury facilitates Standby Letter of Credit issuance through UBC’s primary bank. 

If you require a Standby Letter of Credit please contact Treasury Cash or call 604-822-8822 

UBC Credit Rating 

The University’s debt credit rating is rated by two agencies : S&P and Moody’s. The most recent credit ratings are as follows: 

Rating Agency	Moody’s	S&P
Date of rating	April 2026	April 2026
Long term rating	Aa1	A

About credit ratings

As a requirement of issuing and having publicly traded debt outstanding, UBC is required to maintain a credit rating. A credit rating is an independent evaluation and forward-looking opinion of UBC’s financial health and overall creditworthiness, particularly in repayment of the debt outstanding. A higher rating indicates greater financial stability, which helps build trust with external stakeholders and improves access to capital, and comparing credit ratings of different companies provides investors with a sense of relative potential default rates of a particular bond or debt security.

UBC maintains credit ratings with two different rating agencies, Moody’s Investors Service (commonly referred to as “Moody’s”) and S&P Global Ratings (“S&P”). Each year Moody’s and S&P meet separately with UBC to assess the factors influencing the university’s credit rating. This includes, but is not limited to, an overview of UBC’s strategic objectives, governance structure and executives, our financial results and projections for future years, student enrolment numbers and trends, capital projects, government funding, research funding, fundraising and even Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts.