The combination of LSEG’s trusted financial data with Microsoft’s technology and AI is enabling financial firms to innovate in exciting new ways. Today, LSEG-licensed data can be enabled for use in Microsoft M365 Copilot across apps such as Teams and Excel and even embedded into customers’ own channels and applications. And MCP connectors are driving AI agent creation that can leverage this entire ecosystem. 

This means users can analyse data faster, reduce manual steps, and make decisions with greater confidence.

At Microsoft AI Tour London, clients saw how Copilot can bring LSEG-licensed insights into day-to-day productivity tools, such as Copilot, Teams and Excel, with the ability to link into Workspace when deeper analysis is needed.

• By putting financial professionals and their clients at the heart of development, LSEG and Microsoft are creating opportunities to deliver value with data and AI.
• Collaborations between data, applications and AI provide outcomes tailored to individual use cases through enriching Copilot with information about financial roles, client context and more. 
• This ecosystem of LSEG data, Workspace platform, Microsoft applications, and Copilot AI, and clients’ own AI solutions will expand as financial firms begin incorporating their own data. Building on this foundation, the partnership is already delivering real impact across financial services.

Unlocking value through data and AI
Value-enhancing AI use cases are being implemented by financial services firms around the globe because of the collaboration between LSEG and Microsoft. 

By bringing together LSEG’s unparalleled financial market data with Microsoft’s technology, users can transform their models, workflows and more using AI. To enable financial firms to drive value through AI engagement, LSEG and Microsoft have enhanced the data with additional governance and permissions information. Copilot now has a knowledge of different types of users and a rich understanding of clients. Together, they have the ability to support true creativity through connection. 

For financial professionals, this results in quicker insight generation and reduced operational friction in their daily workflows.

“These joint product initiatives between LSEG and Microsoft are massive co-engineering efforts,” says Niall Archibald, Senior Director – Financial Services Industry, LSEG Partnership, at Microsoft. “They are also customer-led, across personas, segments and workflows.”

Working back from the user experience
Today financial services firms can use Microsoft AI natively within LSEG Workspace, a customisable financial platform delivering real-time data, news, analytics, and trading tools. Workspace serves more than 350,000 users and has more than 1,000 apps. 

“Enabling this collaboration was not just overlaying the 33 petabytes of LSEG data with a natural language experience,” says Nej D’Jelal, Group Head of Workspace at LSEG. “In financial services, trust and accuracy – underpinned by robust data governance – are critical. Data used to make decisions needs to be linked to its underlying provenance.” 

The data also needs to be the correct response to the query, curated for the specific type of financial services user. An AI query in Workspace is designed to generate the right data tailored to the specific type of user – for example, a trader, a wealth manager, or an investment manager – with governance embedded. For users, this ensures they get the right data, faster, with fewer errors and more confidence in the output. D’Jelal adds. “This user experience delivers the trust that’s needed to enable AI to truly support everyday workflow.” 

This becomes even more powerful when you look at how financial professionals work.

Understanding the client
Financial services professionals also spend quite a lot of their business day in Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. So, being able to create a user experience that connects LSEG’s financial data and Microsoft’s AI within those tools is an essential use case. 

Today, users are able to discover LSEG data within the Microsoft apps by using agents built in Copilot Studio – they can delegate to Copilot tasks for the AI to perform in Workspace. Users interact with Copilot Studio agents in M365 Copilot, and can then use the generated outputs within Excel or PowerPoint for further analysis or presentation. Once Copilot has responded, if the user wants to go into Workspace to dive deeper, they are able to do that. This reduces time spent moving between systems and allows users to stay focused on analysis rather than administration.

Crucially, “Copilot brings a built-in understanding of the client relationship, based on internal enterprise intelligence and context to the query,” says Sahana Prabhakar, Principal Software Engineer, Microsoft. “This guides discovery, drives faster insight, and optimizes workflow.” 

This helps to make Copilot a true collaborative partner for the user, so they can focus on the insight and not on manual data wrangling. 

Beyond everyday workflows, the partnership is also opening new creative possibilities for firms.

Democratising AI agent creativity
Using MCP connectors, users are now able to engage with data, licensed through Workspace and LSEG Financial Analytics, to build AI agents in Copilot Studio. 

“I know from my experience working at financial firms that in the past it has been incredibly difficult to work with data,” says Emily Prince, Group Head of Analytics and Group Head of AI, LSEG. “Great ideas would get stuck at implementation, either because firms didn’t have the data or didn’t have the access to the time of engineering and technology teams. People haven’t been able to ideate in the way they perhaps wanted to.” 

Now, all of LSEG’s data is accessible through MCP connectors, and those MCP connectors enable clients to build agents and connect LSEG’s trusted, AI ready data directly into their workflows and across Microsoft applications.

This gives teams the ability to prototype ideas quickly, automate manual steps, and test AI workflows without relying heavily on engineering teams.

“Based on your needs, MCP will surface the data for your use case,” Prince adds. “It will also help you to discover data that you might not know was available, such as historical data. This makes it much easier to bring AI agents into production, and to truly innovate.”

In addition, data rights controls are embedded in the MCP connectors, so the end user knows the permissions that are in place. Metadata is also attached to support AI use cases. 

All of this sets the stage for the next major step in the collaboration.

Looking to the future
The next step is to enable financial services firms to bring their own data into the mix with LSEG’s financial data and Microsoft’s technology and AI. This will allow firms to generate more personalised insights, automate more complex processes and differentiate their strategies. This will allow firms to generate more personalised insights, automate more complex processes and differentiate their strategies. Says Prince, “I believe this is going to unlock almost boundless creativity.”

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