Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings have assigned provisional ratings to notes to be issued under a new ABS Series 2016-1 Trust from St George, making it Westpac's first ABS deal for 2016.All receivables were originated by St George Finance Limited's policies. St George is a wholly owned subsidiary of Westpac Banking Corporation. This is St George's seventh auto ABS transaction and its fourth since merging with Westpac, and preliminary rating by Moody's/Fitch are: A$405.0 million Class A Notes: (P)Aaa (sf) / AAA(EXP); $25.0 million Class B Notes: (P)Aa3 (sf) / AA(EXP)sf; $20.0 million Class C Notes, (P)A2 (sf) / A(EXP)sf; $14.0 million Class D Notes, (P)Baa3 (sf) / BBB(EXP)sf; and $10.0 million Class E Notes, (P)Ba1 (sf) / BB(EXP)sf.Neither Moody's nor Fitch rated the $26.0 million seller notes."This Australian prime ABS transaction is a cash securitisation of receivables from loans to obligors in Australia," said a Moody's pre-sale report, which shows that the portfolio consists of consumer finance (68.6 per cent), finance lease (17.5 per cent), goods loans/chattel mortgage (13.7 per cent) and commercial hire purchase (0.2 per cent) receivables secured by motor vehicles. Fitch's pre-sale report noted that "the collateral backing the Crusade 2016-1 transaction, statistically, is of similar credit quality to prior pools securitised under the Crusade ABS program". The pool comprises receivables backed by motor vehicles with a weighted average seasoning of 15.5 months and average receivable size of A$22,049. The weighted average balloon residual percentage is 6.8 per cent.The receivables book has experienced relatively low levels of defaults to date, "with the majority of quarterly vintage gross loss percentages ranging from 1.3 to 3.8 per cent for passenger vehicles," according to a presale report from Fitch.Delinquencies greater than 30 days have generally tracked below 3.0 per cent.