When OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman tweeted about ChatGPT in November 2022, it sparked a global wave of experimentation with generative AI. For Cristina Pieretti, general manager and head of generative AI solutions at Moody’s, it was a call to action.
“We immediately saw the potential,” says Pieretti. “We knew generative AI could change how we work, especially in a data-rich, highly regulated environment like financial services.”
That insight led to the creation of Moody’s Research Assistant, which launched in December 2023. Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and grounded in Moody’s proprietary data, the tool quickly became a game-changer. Thousands of users from over 115 customers across the world adopted it to quickly generate insights and streamline deep financial and thematic analysis, saving up to 30 per cent of their time.
But Research Assistant was just the beginning.
“This product had the fastest adoption rate of anything we have launched before,” says Pieretti. “We quickly realised what a big impact generative AI was going to have on everything. We could see the benefits of its natural language capabilities and how it could be applied for many of the things we do both internally and externally. We knew we had to be ahead of the game with this.”
Moody’s generative AI evolution began with a focus on surfacing insights efficiently. By mid-2023, the team had launched beta trials and customer previews. By the end of that year, Research Assistant was live, offering natural language access to Moody’s extensive data estate. In 2024, the platform expanded to include additional data sources such as news, annual reports and earnings transcripts, as well as advanced screening and insights beyond rated entities, eventually covering over 190,000 companies by May 2025.
Yet as adoption grew, so did ambition. “We realised that surfacing information wasn’t enough,” says Pieretti. “The next step was to automate the entire workflow. That’s where agentic AI comes in.”
Moody’s Agentic Solutions represent a leap forward in AI-driven transformation. These aren’t just tools, they’re intelligent co-workers. Built on an agentic architecture, they replicate the rigour and sequence of specialised analytical workflows, automating multi-step processes from discovery to delivery.
“Agentic AI is transformational,” says Pieretti. “It’s not just about saving time, it’s about elevating the quality and consistency of decision-making.”
Each solution is powered by a coordinated system of domain-specific agents that curate essential data from Moody’s data estate, distil complex financial and market data into actionable intelligence, translate analysis into executive-ready narratives and package everything into clear, decision-ready outputs.
Together, these agents automate high-value workflows across credit assessment, portfolio monitoring and sales enablement. Traditionally, building a credit memo could take up to 40 hours. Now, Agentic Solutions can complete the task in a fraction of the time by providing quality consistency and comprehensive analytical depth.
“Agents gather financials, evaluate risk, and generate structured credit assessments with peer comparisons and visual summaries,” says Pieretti. “It’s consistent, fast and grounded in Moody’s data.”
For sales and marketing professionals, agents can identify prospects, analyse buying signals and prepare tailored intelligence briefs. For portfolio managers, they provide continuous early warning monitoring, surfacing emerging risks across large counterparty sets.
As efficiency mandates show no sign of easing in financial services, institutions are turning to AI solutions to scale decision-making without overburdening resources. As adoption accelerates, leaders are weighing the transformational possibilities within an environment of non-negotiable precision and the need for reliability and transparency in AI-generated outputs.
Pieretti addresses how grounding innovation in a foundation of curated, decision-grade data is the key to scaling with confidence: “The real potential of AI in financial services isn’t unlocked by technological innovation alone – it’s realised when outputs are anchored in a curated, expansive intelligence foundation. At Moody’s we’ve grounded our agentic architecture in our data estate – encompassing decades of market, financial and proprietary insights – then include clear, linked sourcing to underpin transparency in every output.”
Her advice? Lead the inevitable. “It is better to be the disruptor than the disrupted,” says Pieretti.
Generative AI has already begun to change the game. Organisations that have implemented a solid foundation and are scaling with intent are realising real business impact. So, what began as a tweet has evolved into a full-scale transformation at Moody’s. From the Research Assistant to today’s Agentic Solutions, the journey reflects a bold vision: to empower decision-makers with AI that doesn’t just inform, but acts.
“Agentic AI is the future of work,” says Pieretti. “It’s how we’ll do more with less, with greater precision and impact than ever before.”
Discover more insights like this in the Summer 2025 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.