Liner Notes: Juan Licari and Cat Tucker

Welcome to our next edition of Liner Notes, where I reveal the stories of Moody’s colleagues and other guests who are moving the financial industry forward. In this special edition, I had two guests join me - Cat Tucker and Juan M. Licari .

Thank you for joining me, Cat and Juan. Let's start by getting to know more about your roles.

Cat: I lead product management within Moody's Ratings technology, which is a relatively new function in the last year and a half. My team owns the products and roadmap for all internal tools and now, increasingly external tools, as we connect them to other parts of the organization. We manage the product life cycle of those tools and capabilities across MIS.

Juan:?My role is to provide direction to our quantitative risk experts around analytics, modeling and research within 穆迪分析 . My team helps build the muscles that power many of risk solutions. We also embrace new techniques, while balancing model precision with ease of use and transparency.?At times I feel like a “professional translator” when solving challenges - I need to understand the business needs of our customers and then be able to relay that information back to our team.

?How did you get into this area?

Cat: I rode the wave of the project-to-product evolution in technology that’s happened over the last 15 years. Prior to joining Moody’s, I started working in relationship management and project management, in the digital space at JP Morgan, which evolved into product management as we know it today.

I grew my expertise in different businesses across the firm and brought that experience to Moody's?- to establish the product management discipline and accelerate the delivery of value to our customers and stakeholders.

Juan: I say that it was destiny! In 2006, I was finishing up my PhD degree in economics and when considering a summer internship, I reached out to the economics team at Moody’s and was invited to join their summer program that started three days later – right time and place for my application it seems! My experience since then has been an evolution from macroeconomics to credit, to becoming a risk analyst and modeler. I’ve been able to see the strong linkages between economics and risk cycles firsthand, which sparked a deep curiosity to learn how to approach integrated risk through a foundation of consistent economic assumptions across risk domains.?This is something that sits at the core of Moody’s Integrated Risk Assessment strategy.

We focus on delivering a world-class experience for our customers by helping them identify risk and solve complex business problems. Can you both share how we provide value to them in your respective areas?

Juan: Analyzing risk today requires us to look beyond traditional sources and call for insights from experts across a wide range of risk domains. Moody’s has invested in acquiring data and expertise of many risk areas beyond credit, organically and through strategic acquisitions. These new data assets help provide valuable inputs to get the 360-degree risk assessment process started. But the real differentiator comes when these data sets are interconnected with each other. By doing so, we can understand and quantify how risks get mitigated or reinforced across each other. Such data interoperability unlocks new value for our customers – it helps connect the dots of risk shocks that otherwise may seem isolated.

A great example is the ability to link geographic locations for a company’s facilities while mapping the firm’s network of suppliers and customers. We can then, for instance, quantify the downstream supply chain disruptions that may follow from a climate event in the vicinity of the factory building. And not only can we perform this calculation ex-post, after the climate event happens, but our predictive analytics solutions also provide us with what-if analysis capabilities to identify pockets of future excessive risks and opportunities for resilient investments. In short, interoperable data assets serve as the foundation to realize the benefits of integrated risk analytics.

Cat: One of the things we are doing is making sure we are including our customers in our process. We start with customer needs, and everything that is developed needs to be seen through the lens of, “is it valuable to the customer, does it solve their problem, is it working?” The discipline that we are applying in developing that roadmap and thinking about the solutions we deploy is less about what someone internal thinks we need and more about identifying the needs of our customers.

I agree! It’s our job to deliver a great experience for our customers and understand their sense of value. Juan, can you share more about how we are using world-class technology (be it in A.I, machine learning, etc.) in our solutions to help our customers, and what do you think the future holds?

Juan: Machine learning and artificial intelligence are here to stay and have started a revolution in our industry. Today, modelers have far more tools to help answer business questions more precisely, and we have the computing power and infrastructure to leverage these capabilities. Technology is helping us collect more data than ever and it brings a new set of analytical tools to tackle big data assets.

Still, my perspective is that even with technology evolving, robots won’t replace analysts – we still need the minds of our risk experts. Technology allows for more data at our disposal, collection at a higher frequency and data assets that we didn’t have before. It changes the tasks of a traditional risk modeler, but their expert judgement and decades of experience will continue to add value to the risk management process. Analysts also connect thoughts through experiences of other industries and asset classes. Trying to replicate this in a modeling framework is quite challenging.

I had the pleasure of visiting our new office in Charlotte, North Carolina – what an incredible space! Cat, can you share your thoughts on how this new office will enable employees to work and collaborate in a more agile way?

Cat: There is such energy in just being able to stop and talk to organically fall into conversations without needing a Zoom meeting or stopping in an office! Physical interaction is hard to replicate over Zoom, and ultimately allows for collective collaboration and for an energy that drives us forward. I also think it’s important to identify the activities that make sense for in-person interaction, and which for virtual interaction - because now we’re always going to have both.

You can certainly feel the energy the moment you step into the office! What do you love most about working at Moody’s?

Cat: I feel like I make a difference and I am valued every day at work, which I’ve never experienced anywhere else. Sure, we encounter problems but our ability to impact those problems and make a change, where people listen and work together to move the needle forward is unprecedented. It’s a function of culture, the size of our organization and our leadership team, where fundamentally we are always striving to improve. That speaks volumes about this company.

Juan: I love the collaboration at Moody’s - I can’t think of a single task that isn’t a team effort! We are such a team-oriented organization, it’s all about team objectives which increase a sense of belonging and creates a stronger, more inclusive culture - a core component of job satisfaction.

We do have a special culture here at Moody’s, that centers around our collaborative spirit! What’s the one thing people might not know about working at Moody’s?

Juan: Something people may not know about working here is that how we get to the outcome and achieve our goal is just as important as the outcome itself. How we do things, how we get to where we need to be and how we go about it really matters and speaks to the collaborative approach I mentioned before.

Cat: I think that how tight knit Moody’s is, especially given our size, enables that collaborative approach Juan mentioned. This helps us understand the business end-to-end and build relationships. Being part of an intimate company is why we enjoy what we do and inspires us to make an impact.

Who is someone in your life that has inspired you?

Cat: I had a mentor when I joined JP Morgan who taught me two things that I’ve carried through my career - that people matter and to get into the details, you are never too senior to know how something works. Personally, my mom inspires me because of her energy and support. She has always been my advocate and biggest cheerleader, and I apply that same energy every day to be a cheerleader for my colleagues and my team.

Juan: Similar to Cat, my parents have inspired me throughout my life. They’ve always led by example and sacrificed so much so my siblings and I could receive a good education. Education was super important growing up and they motivated us to continue our studies in graduate school overseas. My parents also sacrificed without complaining which is something I carry into my professional career.

And finally, what career advice would you like to share?

Juan: One should strive for knowledge creation and sharing, enabling ourselves to grow through different experiences and opportunities. Give it 110% and continue educating yourself in a humble, equitable and thankful way. In short, never stop learning and sharing such knowledge with your peers.

Cat: That was a very inspiring answer, Juan! My advice is build authentic relationships. Every role in my career, including this one, has come from an interpersonal relationship where I worked with someone and there was value there. There will always be things you do or don’t like, but the relationships you form will carry you through your career.