Politics, a shifting financial landscape, environmental risks, and AI innovation are rewiring global credit
Welcome to our launch of Moody’s Outlooks for 2026. Each year, our annual Outlooks campaign brings together Moody’s Ratings’ leading research, forecasts, and insights to help market participants prepare for the year ahead.
One of the first key reports in this campaign, the Global Credit Conditions Outlook, details a decisive transition in credit markets: structural forces now matter more than cyclical business swings. Political fragmentation, the rise of private credit, breakthrough advances in artificial intelligence, and intensifying environmental pressures are redefining credit fundamentals, driving policy choices, and widening performance gaps across regions and sectors.
These dynamics set the stage for the months ahead, identifying where vulnerabilities may deepen, resilience may build, and dispersion in credit outcomes is likely to grow.
Key takeaways from the 2026 Global Credit Conditions Outlook:
Politics is redefining predictability. Polarization and populism are pushing governments toward more inward-looking policies, fragmenting global coordination and raising long-term credit risks.
Finance is evolving beyond banks. Private credit is expanding access to capital while creating new transparency and leverage risks. Digital assets, stablecoins, and tokenization are transforming liquidity and regulation.
AI breakthroughs will determine who benefits. Sustained innovation could drive broad productivity gains; stalled progress would concentrate value in a few highly digital sectors.
The costs of extreme weather events are cascading through economies. Extreme weather losses are driving up insurance costs, straining fiscal budgets, and exposing adaptation shortfalls, especially in emerging markets.
Watch the video:
Read the 2026 Global Credit Conditions Outlook.
Interested in reading more outlooks for 2026? Visit our Outlooks hub.
From outlook to action: Get more with Moody’s Research Assistant
Looking for an easier way to take a deeper dive? We have an AI for that. Moody’s Research Assistant, our GenAI platform, streamlines access to Moody’s research, offering faster, more targeted credit insights across geographies and sectors. It helps you analyze trends around refinancing risk, sector divergence, policy exposure, and more.
Throughout this year’s campaign, we’ll be sharing tailored sample prompts for our most topical outlooks, giving you clear, actionable starting points for scenario analysis and credit research across the most pressing themes.
Let’s dive in with a selection of sample prompts around the key forces shaping global credit conditions for 2026.
- Prompt: Write a detailed analysis describing the effects of political polarization on sovereign credit ratings across major economies.
Why is this prompt important? The repercussions of polarization lie far beyond politics. It's a potent driver of credit risk, with it's tendency to disrupt policy norms, undermine institutional strength, and raise event risk, all of which influence sovereign ratings. Recent analysis shows that while fiscal strength often cushions immediate impacts, prolonged gridlock and populist shifts can erode governance quality and credit outlooks.
Why try this prompt? It helps you identify which economies are most vulnerable to rating downgrades and why markets may be underestimating these risks.
- Prompt: How does the growth of private credit affect traditional bank lending and financial stability?
Why is this prompt important? Private credit has surged past $1.5 trillion AUM, competing with banks for lending opportunities and reshaping financial interlinkages. While it offers flexibility and liquidity, its rapid growth introduces systemic risks, especially since the sector hasn’t faced a major downturn at scale.
Why try this prompt? Exploring this prompt will clarify how private credit affects bank lending standards, liquidity, and financial stability, and whether collaboration or competition will dominate.
- Prompt: Which financial institutions are best positioned to benefit from tokenization trends?
Why is this prompt important? Tokenization could unlock $15–$18 trillion in assets within a decade. Leaders are already embedding blockchain into operations, while others are leveraging tokenized private funds.
Why try this prompt? It helps you analyze which players are strategically positioned to capture efficiencies and new revenue streams as tokenization scales.
- Prompt: What are the long-term credit risks associated with overinvestment in AI infrastructure?
Why is this prompt important? AI optimism is driving a $2 trillion data-center buildout, but overinvestment poses risks: high leverage, delayed returns, and execution challenges. If adoption stalls, sectors with structural limits could face margin compression and rating pressure.
Why try this prompt? This prompt lets you evaluate “risk weak points” and which industries are most exposed to credit deterioration.
- Prompt: What role do catastrophe bonds and CRDCs play in mitigating sovereign credit risk?
Why is this prompt important? Extreme weather losses exceeded $318 billion last year, straining public finances. Catastrophe bonds and climate-resilient debt clauses offer innovative ways to transfer risk and stabilize sovereign credit profiles.
Why try this prompt? It helps you explore how these instruments diversify financing sources and reduce fiscal vulnerability to climate shocks.
And remember, for the sharpest insights, structure your prompts with care. Specify the geography, sector, time frame, and preferred output format. Using year-over-year comparisons can help reveal trends and changes, while asking for results in tables, lists, charts, or SWOT analyses will give you data in the format most useful to your workflow.
Example:
Instead of:
What is the 2026 global credit outlook?
Try:
Provide key insights on the 2026 global credit outlook, including positive and negative points for the US and Asia, potential changes, and sector risks, presented in a table.
For more prompt ideas and detailed guidance, you can also visit our Research Assistant prompting hub.
Together, the 2026 Outlooks campaign and Moody’s Research Assistant give you new ways to understand and act on the forces shaping global credit. By combining Moody’s forward-looking research with AI-powered insight, we can help make it easier to navigate complexity, unlock opportunity, and prepare for what comes next.