Case Study — May 29, 2026
Firms in the Energy Sector Automate Credit Memos for Speed and Consistency
THE CLIENT:
Firms in the energy sector
USERS:
The credit risk management teams
A recent report from the Economics and Country Risk group at S&P Global Market Intelligence1 signals that the war in the Middle East has shifted the global economic outlook, dampening growth prospects for 2026. Rising inflation will lead to less accommodative global financial conditions, which will have broad negative effects on demand. This will weigh on business investment and lower corporate profits, creating a very challenging time for credit analysts who are charged with minimizing negative exposure with their counterparties.
The credit risk management teams at energy companies are responsible for assessing the creditworthiness of thousands of suppliers located around the world. The preparation of credit memos is a very manual and time-consuming process, and it is not easy to refresh the analysis to keep up to date with ever-changing global developments. Teams have expressed interest in understanding how new capabilities driven by generative artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially introduce time and cost efficiencies.
AI is introducing time and cost efficiencies when preparing credit memos and enabling users to tap into a larger set of information to enhance the analysis.
Pain Points
Members of credit risk management teams have been spending many hours creating credit memos for a large number of counterparties. They began to investigate AI solutions that could:
- Help reduce the time involved so they can reallocate resources to higher-value activities.
- Enable them to quickly re-run analysis as market conditions change.
- Easily tap into a broader set of data to enhance the evaluations.
- Introduce more consistent approaches across analysts at their firms.
- Most importantly, generate review-ready results that can be trusted.
Members of the teams contacted S&P Global Market Intelligence ("Market Intelligence") to see what it was doing on the AI front since they knew the company was renowned for its credit expertise and reliable data.
The Solution
Market Intelligence specialists described the company's long-standing AI initiatives, many built with leading technology partners to scale innovation, improve data delivery and embed AI into financial workflows with precision. One of the newest developments is Credit Memo BuilderTM, an AI-driven capability backed by S&P Global's advanced credit expertise and trusted data to deliver credit memos fast and at scale. The capability provides:
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Faster and smarter end-to-end memo creation |
Credit Memo Builder quickly delivers automated first drafts and repeatable memo-ready summaries by utilizing templates, section rules and proprietary data inputs tailored by user. It pulls data from S&P Global's AI-ready datasets to reduce the time needed to collect and synthesize information and make inferences. The data includes industry reports, credit research, news and financial statements. It also includes a wide range of specialized data, such as RiskGauge Scores that provide a holistic assessment of a company's fundamental credit risk and market-based signals and S&P Global Ratings' credit ratings. Purpose‑built templates and section ideas are easily customized through a guided prompt framework, enabling teams to pinpoint exact data sources, collaborate with credit experts and efficiently deliver bespoke reports. |
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Reliability based on trusted S&P Global data |
AI needs more than just large volumes of data. It requires information that is consistent, explainable, enriched and ready for direct integration into workflows. S&P Global's data is:
Proprietary information can also be securely uploaded for use across an entire memo or at a section level. |
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Thorough transparency and explainability |
Credit Memo Builder quickly surfaces credit-relevant data and articulates drivers and rationales. It helps decrease omissions and version drift, minimizing operational risk. |
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Analyst in the loop controls |
AI does the heavy lifting to source the right information and put it in the appropriate section of a memo, but analysts can run sanity checks on the overall narrative and prompt sections to expand, summarize or integrate with other documents as needed. |
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Assistance to validate results |
Credit Memo Builder minimizes the need to manually validate information. Analysts can:
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Key Benefits
Credit risk management teams have been impressed with Credit Memo Builder. They quickly recognized the ability to turn hours of work into minutes of work and be able to apply analysts to higher-value activities. They also recognized the opportunity to:
- Easily refresh the analysis with new data to avoid unwanted exposure as market conditions change.
- Provide more in-depth analysis for all counterparties, not just for the larger relationships.
- Ensure that all relevant information is considered with AI's ability to tap into a broad set of S&P Global and proprietary data and documents.
- Trust narratives that are evidence‑based and traceable to source data with clear linkages between data, conclusions and analyst judgment.
- Introduce more consistent approaches across analysts and across divisions to deliver committee-ready memos that meet their companies' standards for narratives.
The teams also realized that it is essential to work with an organization with a well-known reputation for credit analysis and extensive data given the impact that counterparty assessments can have on company profitability.
1. "Global Economic Summary, Economics and Country Risk", S&P Global Market Intelligence, Global Economic Outlook, April 2026, https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2026/04/global-economic-outlook-april-2026.