September 24, 2025

Are Credit Chatbots Worth the Resources?

Featuring CreditCompanionTM (Beta) on S&P Capital IQ Pro

Key Contributors: Baird Snyder, Head of New Product Development, Credit Solutions and Humza Khalid, Senior Product Manager, RatingsDirect ®.

Executive Summary: This study documents the effectiveness of CreditCompanionTM (Beta) a Generative-AI application introduced in March 2025, in enhancing credit research and business intelligence. Since its launch, user adoption has surged seven-fold, with 49.8% using it at least weekly. Most frequent use cases include entity-level analysis and macro research, yielding an average processing time reduction of 67%. In contrast to open source chatbots, CreditCompanionTM (Beta) offers superior accuracy, transparency, and insights from research published by S&P Global Ratings. The findings suggest that organizations can achieve significant time and cost savings by leveraging this capability effectively.

The context: Accelerating adoption of Gen-AI in credit research

Since we began to introduce CreditCompanionTM (Beta) in March 2025 to our launch partners, we have seen an increase in adoption. Amongst those which began to use CreditCompanionTM (Beta), 49.8% of respondents use these capabilities at least once a week (see Exhibit 1).

Exhibit 1: Frequency of CreditCompanionTM (Beta) usage

Source: Client Outreach from Credit Solutions from S&P Global Market Intelligence.  For illustration only.  As of August 2025.

Questions that frequently bubble up in our end-user outreach include:

Which credit risk use cases and prompts are particularly suited for credit chatbots?

What are the benefits, time and cost savings companies can expect from implementing CreditCompanionTM (Beta)?

With access to free chatbots such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Google Gemini, how does CreditCompanionTM (Beta) differentiate itself in business processes?

Which use cases are best suited for credit chatbots?

Prior to the introduction of CreditCompanionTM (Beta), tools such as semantic search and landing pages were available to locate relevant content on RatingsDirect® on S&P Capital IQ Pro. CreditCompanionTM (Beta) is not the only means to interact with or locate S&P Global Ratings’ research articles.

However, for users that have started to use CreditCompanionTM (Beta), their most frequently used capabilities are for entity-level analysis, followed by macro, industry, and sector research summarization (Exhibit 2).

Exhibit 2: Examples of commonly adopted use cases for CreditCompanionTM (Beta)

Source: Client Outreach from Credit Solutions from S&P Global Market Intelligence.  For illustration only.  As of August 2025.

*Definitions: High: More than 50% of total user prompts fall into this category. Medium: More than 20% of user prompts fall into this category. Emerging: Approximately 10% or fewer of user prompts fall into this category.

The extent to which you can leverage the advantages and time savings of Gen AI chatbots hinges on the quality of their responses; if the responses are unreliable, users will ultimately revert to their previous processes.

Time and cost savings from using credit chatbots.

To evaluate this "quality," we performed a text sentiment analysis on feedback from the early adopters.   Using the AFINN methodology[1],an open-source lexicon to assign positive or negative scores to words. Our product enhancements have resulted in high overall satisfaction.  63.2% of early adopters shared feedback at or above the 70th percentile on the AFINN scale. The sentiment analysis highlights those end-users value CreditCompanionTM (Beta) not merely as another chatbot, but for the quality of its responses compared to similar offerings.

Some user comments include:

“Works well as a librarian for the library… to find the right research out there that you’re unfamiliar with...”

“The tool is great and saves time summarizing and condensing information.  I’ve asked questions about sector outlooks in specific geographies, and it was great… it definitely makes life easier….”

“CreditCompanionTM (Beta) is a great complement to the search bar in CIQ in RatingsDirect® to “find” certain pieces of research. Although it has less context than other tools like ChatGPT, which can make answers more ‘narrow’, it provides very concrete answers, which is appreciated.”

Source: Client Outreach from Credit Solutions from S&P Global Market Intelligence.  For illustration only.  As of August 2025.

CreditCompanionTM (Beta) has proven to be a time-saver. Based on our internal testing and client feedback, users can reduce their processing time by an average of 67% when using CreditCompanionTM (Beta) (Exhibit 3).

Exhibit 3: Potential time savings of using CreditCompanionTM (Beta)

Source: Internal Research from Credit Solutions from S&P Global Market Intelligence.  For illustration only.  As of August 29, 2025.

Current usage patterns reflect efficiency gains from entity-level analysis, though there remains significant potential to immediately benefit from further usage in macro, industry, and sector analysis and transparency in credit ratings methodology; with further gains as we enhance other automation capabilities in the upcoming releases. Exhibit 4 illustrates how CreditCompanionTM (Beta) can quickly summarize the latest macro research on tariffs affecting semiconductor-related industries.

Exhibit 4: Sample prompts on sector-level research supported by CreditCompanionTM (Beta)

Source: CreditCompanionTM (Beta) on RatingsDirect® on S&P Capital IQ Pro, as of August 8, 2025, for illustration only.

Performance comparisons against an open source chatbot

How does CreditCompanionTM (Beta) compare to an open source chatbot?  We illustrate this by using both applications to describe the financial risk profile of an anonymized company.

We specifically prompt the open source chatbot to mimic S&P Global Ratings research reports, with Exhibit 5a representing the open source chatbot's output and Exhibit 5b highlighting CreditCompanionTM (Beta)'s. We maintained the same word count for depth consistency and made the word count small for display purposes.

The responses reveal that CreditCompanionTM (Beta):

  • Provides a summary of relevant information that influences credit ratings, incorporating content from S&P Global Ratings' published credit ratings reports, including macroeconomic trends, and key credit risk drivers affecting entities. Links to source documents further provide context and resources for further analysis.
  • Outlines how potential changes in the financial risk profile may lead to future ratings actions.
  • Highlights the company's M&A activities and other significant developments that could enhance or impact credit risk.
  • Ensures accurate content usage through entity-level tagging.
  • Links each concept or statement to its source document for easy reference.
  • Reflects updates from S&P Global Ratings regarding the entity in CreditCompanionTM (Beta) and/or RatingsDirect® on S&P Capital IQ Pro by design.

In contrast, the open source chatbot:

  • Summarizes information generically, can miss critical updates like M&A.
  • Has a higher risk of erroneous tagging of entities with similar names.
  • Depends on information that the providers may remove from public circulation, hindering the chatbot's ability to provide critical, time-sensitive updates.
  • Can be more prone to hallucinations, such as an incorrect reference seen below; in this example, it incorrectly includes liquidity into the financial risk profile.

Exhibit 5a: Sample response on an anonymized company’s financial risk profile from an open source chatbot with premium subscription.

Financial Risk Profile – Significant (179 words)

For the 12 months to March 2025, ___ generated revenue of ___ and Adjusted EBITDA of roughly ___, reflecting a solid margin of about __%. Profitability is in line with ___converged peers, but free cash flow remains constrained by interest, lease, and vendor-financing outflows, as well as elevated capex linked to network investments and integration.

Gross debt of about ____ results in leverage of ___, high for the “significant” financial risk category. Management’s public policy targets net leverage of ___, assuming EBITDA growth, capex normalization, and disciplined shareholder returns.

Funding costs are favorable, with a weighted-average cost of debt of __ after hedging, and maturities concentrated in ______, limiting near-term refinancing risk.

Liquidity is adequate, supported by ____ and access to committed bank facilities, but headroom is modest until FCF turns positive, expected from ____.

Overall, high leverage, constrained near-term cash flow, and single-country concentration anchor the financial risk profile at “significant,” balanced by adequate liquidity and a clear deleveraging policy.

Source: Latest premium version of an external chatbot, As of August 11, 2025, for illustration only.

Exhibit 5b: Sample response on an anonymized company’s financial risk profile from CreditCompanionTM (Beta)

Source: CreditCompanionTM (Beta), available on RatingsDirect® on S&P Capital IQ Pro. As of August 11, 2025, For illustration only.

Are credit chatbots worth the investment?

Gen-AI capabilities such as CreditCompanionTM (Beta) can lead to substantial time and cost savings in reducing processing costs by 67%. However, its value rests on being able to effectively develop high-quality, reliable responses by harnessing the content of S&P Global Ratings published research critical updates.  Whilst our early adopters frequently used it for entity-level analysis, there is untapped value in using this for macro and industry research, credit ratings transparency and benchmarking of rated and unrated entities. Organizations that effectively leverage these Gen-AI capabilities can reap benefits from their investments.

1 This approach uses an open-source lexicon to assign positive or negative scores to words, ranging from -5 to +5. The overall sentiment score for each response is the average of these word scores, which we mapped back to percentiles for easier comparison. For more information reference: http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/pubdb/edoc/imm6006.pdf

 

Disclaimer: This analysis has been written and published by S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division independent of S&P Global Ratings, and references in this analysis to “we”, “us” and “our” refer to S&P Global Market Intelligence. S&P Global Market Intelligence’s opinions, quotes and credit-related and other analyses are statements of opinion by S&P Global Market Intelligence as of the date they are expressed and not statements of fact or recommendations to purchase, hold or sell any securities or to make any investment decisions, and do not address the suitability of any security. This material does not represent the views of S&P Global Ratings, nor did S&P Global Ratings participate in the creation of this material. This research is differentiated from the credit opinions published by S&P Global Ratings. See disclosures here

CreditCompanionTM (Beta) Legal Disclaimer: This Credit Chatbot is currently in an experimental development phase. It is designed to provide information and to answer questions using an AI-powered conversational assistant utilizes an LLM (Large Language Model) with a corpus that includes S&P Global Ratings credit ratings data and research to generate its responses.

Some or all of the content made available to you in connection with the Credit Chatbot is generated by artificial intelligence technology. It may therefore contain errors, omissions, inaccuracies, hallucinations, biases, inconsistencies or outdated information. You should independently verify all content that it generates before you use it. S&P Global Market Intelligence LLC and its affiliates ("S&P") do not accept any responsibility or liability for any decisions you make as a result of, or for your reliance on or use of the Credit Chatbot content, whether in contract, tort (including negligence and negligent misstatement), or otherwise. Such use is entirely at your own risk. By proceeding to use this artificial intelligence powered tool you acknowledge and represent that you are Subscriber's behalf and accept these terms as well as the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The use of the Credit Chatbot tool is limited to internal business purposes solely for testing and evaluation of its functionality and features and is subject to the restrictions in the Pricing Schedule relating to the RatingsDirect® Services between S&P and Subscriber ("Pricing Schedule"). All capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings given to such terms in the Pricing Schedule. S&P may discontinue your access to the Credit Chatbot at its sole discretion at any time.

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