Moody’s will use Microsoft, OpenAI for research tool to assess risk. „It’s no longer just about credit risk, you have to understand the reputational profile of who you’re doing business with, the cyber risk, carbon transition, physical risk relating to climate change, financial crime and sanctions.”

Moody’s Corp. is using Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI to create an artificial intelligence assistant that will help customers of the credit rating and research firm analyze reams of information needed to make assessments of risk. “Moody’s Research Assistant” will roll out to customers including analysts, bankers, advisers, researchers and investors. The company expects to have a version to show some clients later this year. Moody’s also envisions future AI assistants for tasks such as lending and underwriting.

Moody’s Corporation and Microsoft announced a new strategic partnership to deliver next-generation data, analytics, research, collaboration and risk solutions for financial services and global knowledge workers.

„Built on a combination of Moody’s robust data and analytical capabilities and the power and scale of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, the partnership creates innovative offerings that enhance insights into corporate intelligence and risk assessment, powered by Microsoft AI and anchored by Moody’s proprietary data, analytics and research.” according to the press release.

Strategic Partnership Highlights

Microsoft and Moody’s are co-creating new products and services for research and risk assessment, built on Azure OpenAI Service for enhanced data and risk management.

“Moody’s CoPilot,” an internal copilot tool, is now deployed to Moody’s 14,000 global employees, and will combine Moody’s proprietary data, analytics and research with the latest large language models (LLMs) and Microsoft’s world-class generative AI technology to drive firm-wide innovation and enhance employee productivity in a safe and secure digital sandbox.

Moody’s is adopting Microsoft Teams to provide a new platform for its knowledge workers and customers that will enhance collaboration, productivity, and communication, while maintaining the highest compliance standards.

For internal use and co-innovations, Microsoft is leveraging Moody’s broad range of solutions, including Moody’s Orbis database – one of the world’s most powerful databases on companies – with applications that include third-party reference data, counterparty risk assessment, and supply chain management.

Microsoft and Moody’s will collaborate on the opportunity to deliver data to their shared customers through Microsoft Fabric, a new analytics platform for end-to-end data management.

Moody’s commits to using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to power its growing suite of generative AI capabilities and cloud-based applications.

Rob Fauber, president and chief executive officer of Moody’s Corporation, said, “Generative AI represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance how companies navigate the ever-evolving world of exponential risk. By combining Microsoft’s cutting-edge AI capabilities with our proprietary data, research and analytics, Moody’s is positioned to lead the next generation of risk analysis, helping our customers make better decisions by unlocking deeper, more integrated, and unmatched perspectives on risk. We have activated our 14,000 global employees to drive unprecedented experimentation and ignite new innovations across our suite of products and solutions. We are excited to partner with Microsoft to set the standard for how generative AI will pioneer new advancements across our industry.”

Unlocking Advancements in Integrated Risk Analysis

A new copilot tool for customers, “Moody’s Research Assistant,” will unlock the full potential of Moody’s resources and solutions to provide customers with a multifaceted view of risk. Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and available through multiple channels, including Microsoft Teams, Moody’s Research Assistant will quickly compile and summarize complex information from multiple data sources, all in a safe and secure environment that protects private and proprietary information.

Among its many anticipated uses will be the ability to generate custom, detailed analyses of a company or sector by seamlessly combining data from across multiple dimensions – such as firmographic data, credit indicators, economic forecasts, and risk and reputational profiles – to provide fast, contextual and informative answers based on the integration of expansive LLMs and Moody’s industry-leading data, analytics and research.

Bill Borden, corporate vice president of worldwide financial services at Microsoft said, “Our partnership will bring together world-class insights from Moody’s with the capabilities, trust and breadth of Microsoft Cloud – including Azure OpenAI Service, Fabric and Teams – to enable next-gen solutions that will unlock powerful business intelligence and transform productivity and collaboration. We look forward to the new opportunities and value this will bring to employees and firms across banking, capital markets and insurance as well as those in other industries such as manufacturing, telecommunications, transportation and utilities.”

Enhancing Moody’s Collaboration and Productivity through Microsoft Teams

Additionally, through the partnership, Moody’s will leverage Microsoft Teams to create a new collaboration, productivity and communication platform for its knowledge workers and customers. With the integration of Moody’s copilot tools, Teams will automate and streamline manual workflows, provide more efficient access to data and content, and synthesize and summarize information from across multiple data sets, resulting in better insights, improved productivity and compliance, and enhanced employee and customer experiences.

Collaborating to Enhance the New Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft and Moody’s will collaborate on the opportunity to deliver data to their shared customers through Microsoft Fabric, a new end-to-end data analytics platform. Microsoft Fabric includes technologies like Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory and Power BI in a single unified product, allowing data engineers opportunity to easily connect and curate data from multiple sources, eliminating sprawl, while better governing data across the entire organization.

“Our customers have to deal with a wide range of different risks — it’s no longer just about credit risk, you have to understand the reputational profile of who you’re doing business with, the cyber risk, carbon transition, physical risk relating to climate change, financial crime and sanctions,” Fauber said. “This technology has so much promise because it makes it so much easier to be able to pull from those different content and data sets and bring them together and deliver insights in a very natural, intuitive way.”

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Microsoft, the biggest investor in OpenAI, has seen a surge in demand from corporate customers who want to use the Azure OpenAI service in order to access the startup’s models in the cloud. These clients can, for example, use the language generation and chatbot capabilities of Open AI’s ChatGPT and GPT4 to write their own applications for employees and customers. Microsoft has reported 2,000 new clients signed up for the service in the first half of the current quarter.