With the end of 2009 also came the end of the credit rating agencies' participation in the retail sector of Australia's financial market. One echo of this fact came last week when Fitch Ratings became the first of the agencies to remove credit ratings assigned to financial instruments targeted at retail investors. Fitch removed its 'A-' ratings on Macquarie's Income Securities and Suncorp-Metway's Convertible Preference Shares. No doubt, this is the first of many such rating withdrawals to come as the CRAs move to meet the conditions of their wholesale Australian Financial Services Licences. This latest action highlights once again the situation that has developed simply because the CRAs are not prepared to accept arbitration of any dispute with a retail investor, as required under a retail AFS licence. The timing of the ratings departure from the retail sector may frustrate efforts (for example, that by ASIC and Treasury) to encourage the development of a retail corporate bond market.The Australian Financial Services Forum sees the development of a retail market as the solution to the limitations of an underdeveloped wholesale corporate bond market.  While it is expected that most issuers will be already listed on the ASX and, to the extent that an issuer is well covered by equity analysts, the market should not lack information on any change in credit quality, the market will lack an objective measurement of relative credit quality - which bonds are investment grade and which are not. This will ensure that retail investors are not fairly compensated for the credit risk of issuers: and just wait for the outcry when the first unrated issuer defaults, leaving Mums and Dads and their self-managed super funds out of pocket.