Moody's Investors Service has followed up on its 19 June move to apply a one-notch downgrade of 12 Australian banks, including Australia's four majors, due to market risks with a further statement that, overall, its ratings for all Australian structured finance transactions - except for one - have remained unchanged. Moody's, commenting on its own actions, said the decision [to downgrade] "has a very limited impact on securitisation transactions and covered bonds in Australia, and although housing market risks remain negative, any losses will stay low."At the same time, Moody's said that rising household debt and growing risks in the housing market - the underlying reasons for its 19 June rating actions - remain "credit negative" for structured finance - that is, rising delinquencies and defaults in RMBS portfolios."Nevertheless, we expect losses in RMBS portfolios to remain low, because house price appreciation has raised the amount of home equity available to absorb losses if loans were to default," said Moody's."Rising house prices have added an average of 14 percentage points of equity to the mortgage loans in our RMBS portfolio."