Recital 1

(1)Under the Internal Ratings Based Approach (‘IRB Approach’), for specialised lending exposures in respect of which an institution is not able to estimate PDs or the institutions’ PD estimates do not meet certain requirements, institutions are to assign risk weights to specialised lending exposures in accordance with Article 153(5) of Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 by attributing them to one of the categories in Table 1 set out in the first subparagraph of Article 153(5) based on their assessment of the specialised lending exposure against each of the factors referred to in its second subparagraph. In order to ensure a harmonised approach to the assignment of the specialised lending exposures to categories, it should be laid down how those factors are to be taken into account by providing for a calculation of values on the basis of which the factors can be linked to the risk categories of that Table. As the specialised lending exposures belong to the corporate exposure class within the IRB Approach and as the method for assigning risk weights to such exposures specified in Article 153(5) of Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 is a form of rating system, the regulatory technical standards for assigning risk weights to specialised lending exposures set by this Regulation should apply in addition to the general rules concerning the assignment of risk weights to corporate exposures and other requirements with regard to rating systems under the IRB Approach.