By Alice Chambers |
With over a century’s experience of guiding organisations through financial decision-making, Moody’s has become synonymous with clarity, rigour and trust. As AI reshapes the industry, Moody’s is building on its legacy to help organisations make better decisions in complex, regulated environments.
Cristina Pieretti, general manager and head of generative AI solutions at Moody’s, says that institutional knowledge has played a crucial role in shaping how the firm approaches agentic AI.
“At Moody’s, our legacy is built on deep partnerships with insurers, corporations and financial institutions,” she says. “That depth shaped our vision for AI as a new architecture for transformation – one that moves with the pace of decision-making and adapts to regulated environments. Agentic AI is our response to the evolving demands placed on financial services through the automation of high-value workflows like credit memo generation, portfolio monitoring with early warnings and sales intelligence. These solutions deliver speed, precision, transparency and confidence to redefine how insight is generated, applied and scaled across the enterprise.”
Agentic AI refers to a new class of systems that go beyond one-off prompts or task automation to manage full, multi-step workflows from start to finish. That evolution began with the launch of Research Assistant in December 2023, an AI tool designed to support users in accessing and interpreting Moody’s financial data more efficiently. Pieretti describes the launch as a “turning point,” not only because financial services providers reacted positively, but also because users quickly began pushing the boundaries of what the technology could do.
“Users engaged immediately, asking for more context, synthesis and automation,” she says. “Soon, they requested full analyses, credit memos and briefs that once took hours to complete. These signals, combined with operational pressures like speed to insight and auditability, made the next step clear: agentic workflows. Research Assistant opened the door, and agentic AI helps our customers walk through it.”
Unlike typical generative AI applications, which are often limited to isolated responses, Moody’s agentic solutions are designed to manage entire workflows. This is especially valuable in financial services, where outputs need to meet internal quality standards as well as external regulatory requirements. For Moody’s, the key to earning trust in AI lies not just in transparency and governance, but also in decades of deep domain understanding.
“Delivering decision-grade outputs in highly regulated environments requires a deep understanding of the industries we serve,” says Pieretti. “At Moody’s, we’ve spent decades working closely with financial institutions, insurers and corporations, gaining insight into their workflows, priorities and challenges. Our agents are powered by AI-ready data that is structured, contextualised and rigorously maintained, and each output is traceable from source to conclusion, aligned with regulatory expectations and supported by ardent quality controls. Through client collaboration, technical precision and embedded quality controls, we produce transparent, auditable outputs that support confident decision-making.”
“At Moody’s, we’ve spent decades working closely with financial institutions, insurers and corporations, gaining insight into their workflows, priorities and challenges,” says Pieretti
The firm’s close collaboration with Microsoft has been instrumental in taking these capabilities from concept to reality. Using Microsoft Azure’s cloud infrastructure, Moody’s has been able to develop, deploy and operationalise agentic AI solutions quickly, while meeting the strict governance needs of the financial sector.
“Our partnership with Microsoft has been foundational,” says Pieretti. “Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities have enabled us to scale securely and innovate rapidly. Together, we’ve built solutions that meet the precision and governance standards of financial services, whether it’s deploying agents across Azure or integrating with Microsoft’s ecosystem to support client workflows. Microsoft’s technology helped us move from experimentation to enterprise deployment, accelerating delivery of agentic solutions.”
These agents are designed to be easily integrated into existing enterprise systems through secure APIs and plug-in capabilities, ensuring customers can embed them into their own operations without needing to overhaul core infrastructure. They function as intelligent co-workers, automating entire multi-step workflows such as credit assessments, portfolio monitoring and sales enablement. Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and grounded in Moody’s data estate, each agent gathers complex financial and market data, performs structured analysis and generates executive-ready outputs.
“AI isn’t replacing expertise,” says Pieretti. “It’s enhancing it and helping professionals spend more time applying judgment, not chasing data. That’s the promise of agentic AI, and that’s where Moody’s is leading the way.”
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