The Financial Stability Board has published its final peer review report on reducing reliance on credit rating agency ratings, reviewing the progress made by national authorities in implementing the FSB principles for reducing reliance on credit ratings.At the St Petersburg G20 Summit and subsequent meetings, the G20 called on national authorities to accelerate progress in implementing the FSB principles in accordance with the FSB roadmap agreed in October 2012.The roadmap sets out milestones for reducing mechanistic reliance on rating agencies in standards, laws and regulations, and for promoting and, where needed, requiring that financial institutions strengthen and disclose information on their own credit assessment approaches.The FSB completed its preliminary review of progress made with the implementation of the FSB principles in August last year.  The review found that progress across jurisdictions had been uneven.Removing references to rating agencies from laws and regulations is only the first step; mechanistic reliance on rating agencies can also come from market practices and contracts. The key challenge lies in developing alternative standards of creditworthiness and processes so that rating agencies are not the sole input to credit risk assessment.For their part in this final review, Australian regulators (ASIC, APRA and RBA) said that since 2008, and consistent with Australia's strong track record of ensuring effective prudential supervision, they have found that credit ratings do not play a major role in the financial system and that there is not strong mechanistic reliance on credit ratings.The main use of ratings is within bank prudential regulation, which is based on the internationally agreed Basel framework. Application of the Basel framework is robustly overseen by APRA to ensure that banks adequately manage their exposure to credit risk.However, Australian regulators will closely monitor international developments and will consider future recommendation arising from standard setting bodies regarding the use of credit ratings.