Moody’s: Beyond the Numbers

At Moody’s, numbers are our business. We are at the heart of the capital markets, evaluating creditworthiness and measuring and managing financial risk. We spend our days with numbers — obtaining them, crunching them, analyzing them and reporting them. But we are more than that. Behind the scenes — and beyond the numbers — is a vital company made up of more than 10,600 people.

And while we may be over 100 years old, we are hardly old-fashioned. Our technology is cutting edge, our people are bright and engaged, and our management is focused on innovation and impact.

Through this report, we welcome you to our world beyond the numbers and invite you to get to know our company and culture.

About This Report

This is Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) seventh annual corporate social responsibility report. This report covers the period of January 1 to December 31, 2016 and contains Standard Disclosures from the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards. Previous reports can be accessed in our CSR archive, accessible from the navigation menu of this site. Like our corporate annual report, this document covers all of Moody’s Corporation and its subsidiaries.

We welcome your feedback on this report. Email us with your thoughts and questions.

A Letter from Raymond W. McDaniel, Jr.

President & CEO of Moody’s Corporation

We chose to call this year’s report “Moody’s: Beyond the Numbers” to highlight that, while our business is working with numbers, numbers don’t capture everything about us. They don’t capture the way we embrace innovation, for instance, and how it propels our business forward. Nor do numbers tell the whole story of the impact that our innovation has on our employees, our customers and our communities.

Let me give you a few examples of how innovation and impact are making a difference.

New technologies are changing the financial and information services ecosystem, creating new industry players, new requests from our customers, and new possibilities for our business, products and processes. These new developments pose both questions and opportunities for Moody’s.

Internally, we created the Emerging Business Unit within Moody’s Analytics to explore new financial technologies. We think of it as our innovation engine that will fuel the creation of new customer solutions. We also recently launched Moody’s Innovation Council, comprising a group of senior managers from throughout the company who bring a high level of attention to new technology developments and how they can benefit our customers, our employees and our business.

In 2015, we made an investment in Finagraph, a fintech company that collects, processes and analyzes data from small businesses with great speed. Together, Moody’s Analytics and Finagraph created Moody’s Analytics Risk Quality (MARQ™) — an innovative tool that furthers our efforts to transform the way lenders interact with small businesses. MARQ uses the Finagraph data engine to speed up the lending process while helping small businesses understand and improve their MARQ credit score. The social impact is capital flowing more efficiently to small and medium-size businesses.

Moody’s Investors Service introduced Green Bond Assessments in 2016. Green Bonds are issued to fund sustainable projects. Until Green Bond Assessments were launched, there was no way for potential investors to tell if the issuer actually has the right systems and checks in place to ensure that the proceeds of the bond would have the intended environmental impact. The assessments add important transparency and an independent voice to the market for these specialized bonds. We are proud to have set the standard in this growing, global market.

I invite you to scroll or click your way through this report to learn more about our company and culture. It all “adds up” to the fact that Moody’s is a vibrant company where we value our employees, customers, investors and communities — and our role in the global capital markets.