The inquiry relates to the credit rating agency's July 2011 decision to pull its ratings on a new, $1.5 billion commercial-mortgage-backed security, or CMBS, issued by Goldman Sachs Group and Citigroup.

The SEC's scrutiny is part of its annual review of S&P and other credit rating firms, but in the rating agency's case the regulators are examining whether S&P used more lenient standards to rate new CMBS deals than on other outstanding deals, the Journal said, citing employees. S&P has not been accused of any wrongdoing, the article added.

The SEC last year targeted S&P for a possible civil lawsuit over its ratings of a collateralized debt obligation backed by mortgage securities.

Standard & Poor is a unit of the McGraw-Hill Cos Inc.

Neither the regulator nor the rating agency could be reached for comments outside regular business hours.

(Reporting by Balaji Sridharan and Siddharth Cavale in Bangalore; Editing by Matt Driskill)

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