Microsoft is integrating real-time financial data from London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and Moody’s directly into Copilot in Excel, marking a significant expansion of the AI assistant’s capabilities for financial professionals. The move, enabled through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allows eligible Microsoft 365 users to pull in market prices, credit ratings, risk metrics, and other trusted datasets using natural language prompts.

Announced quietly via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and highlighted in a recent tech community post, the integration aims to streamline workflows for analysts, portfolio managers, and finance teams who rely on up-to-the-minute data to make decisions. Instead of leaving Excel to hunt down figures from terminals or web portals, users can now ask Copilot, “What’s the latest Moody’s credit rating for Apple Inc.?” or “Show me the LSEG consensus earnings estimate for Microsoft,” and have the results populate directly into cells.

How MCP Powers the Connection

Model Context Protocol is an open standard championed by Anthropic, designed to let AI models safely connect with external data sources and tools. Microsoft has emerged as a prominent backer, weaving MCP support into various Copilot experiences across Windows and Microsoft 365. For Excel, MCP provides a secure conduit through which Copilot can fetch data from approved providers—starting with LSEG and Moody’s—without requiring users to build custom connectors or write complex formulas.

Under the hood, MCP defines a server-client architecture. The data providers host MCP servers that expose structured information from their databases. Copilot, acting as the client, interprets a user’s prompt, identifies the appropriate MCP server and data type, then retrieves and inserts the result. Microsoft has implemented guardrails to ensure that only authenticated, license-eligible users can access these data streams, and all queries are logged to meet compliance requirements.

What Data Is Available?

From the initial rollout, users with the right subscriptions can access a broad swath of financial intelligence from LSEG and Moody’s:

  • LSEG Data: Real-time and delayed market quotes, company fundamentals, consensus estimates, historical pricing, foreign exchange rates, and economic indicators. This includes equities, fixed income, commodities, and macroeconomic series pulled from the LSEG Data & Analytics platform.
  • Moody’s Data: Credit ratings, research opinions, default and recovery statistics, ESG scores, and other risk-assessment metrics that cover sovereigns, corporates, and structured finance instruments.

The integration is not a one-size-fits-all feed. Users must specify what they need in plain language, and Copilot will offer context-sensitive suggestions. For instance, typing “Compare the current Moody’s rating of the top 5 U.S. banks” would generate a table with the requested data points, sourced directly from Moody’s MCP endpoint.

Eligibility and Licensing

The feature is not universally available. According to Microsoft’s documentation, it requires:

  • A Microsoft 365 Copilot license (either the standalone add-on or the Copilot for Microsoft 365 suite).
  • A relevant data subscription from LSEG or Moody’s. Without this, the MCP endpoints will reject queries with a licensing error.
  • Administrator configuration through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, where IT staff must explicitly enable the LSEG and Moody’s connectors under the Copilot settings.

Organizations that already hold enterprise data licenses from these providers will find the setup lightweight. Once the connector is authorized, Copilot automatically discovers the available datasets for licensed users. Microsoft is exploring additional subscription models to broaden access, possibly via per-query fees for smaller firms, but no timeline has been shared.

Why This Matters for Excel Power Users

Excel has long been a hub for financial modeling, but integrating live external data has historically meant piecing together Power Query connections, VBA scripts, or add-ins. The MCP-driven approach collapses those steps into a conversational interface, which could dramatically reduce the time spent on data gathering and validation.

A portfolio manager reviewing quarterly reports, for example, could ask Copilot to “Pull LSEG actual EPS vs. estimates for the last 8 quarters for my watchlist,” and the data arrives formatted and ready for analysis. The same manager might then prompt, “Add Moody’s latest credit outlook for each company in column B,” layering risk insights right alongside financial metrics. Because the data comes directly from the authoritative source, the risk of transcription or copy-paste errors drops significantly.

Microsoft is also positioning this as a differentiator against rival spreadsheet tools. Google Sheets offers GOOGLEFINANCE for basic market data, but the Copilot plus MCP combination gives Excel a more expansive, enterprise-grade solution with premium datasets.

User Experience and Early Feedback

While a full public rollout is still underway, early adopters in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program have described the feature as “a natural extension of the stock data type,” but with far deeper capabilities. One beta tester from a mid-sized asset manager noted, “We used to have a dedicated junior analyst pulling LSEG data for our models each morning. Now, the portfolio managers can do it themselves in seconds without leaving Excel.”

Another user highlighted that the MCP integration seems faster than traditional Excel add-ins for LSEG Workspace, attributing the speed to optimized API calls that return data in JSON and convert it to Excel-friendly formats. However, not all feedback is glowing. Some users have reported occasional failures when prompts are ambiguous—for example, asking for “the latest rating” without specifying the issuer, leading Copilot to flag the request. Microsoft says it is fine-tuning the natural-language model to better handle these edge cases and will eventually suggest clarifications rather than simply erroring out.

Security and Compliance Considerations

For financial institutions, data security is paramount. Microsoft has designed the MCP flow to adhere to its existing compliance frameworks, including data residency commitments and encryption in transit and at rest. All Copilot requests that hit the LSEG or Moody’s MCP servers travel over TLS-encrypted channels, and the data providers never see the user’s identity beyond an anonymized token. Audit logs capture each query for regulatory review, and administrators can restrict data retrieval by geography or instrument type if required by internal policies.

Additionally, Microsoft is working with LSEG and Moody’s to ensure that the data delivered through Copilot matches the same usage rights and redistribution terms defined in the organization’s enterprise license. This means that data used in a model can be shared internally according to existing contracts, but it won’t inadvertently grant broader redistribution rights.

Future Directions and the MCP Ecosystem

This launch is just the beginning of Microsoft’s MCP strategy for Office. The protocol’s open nature means that any data provider could—in theory—build an MCP server and become a trusted source for Copilot in Excel, Word, or PowerPoint. Microsoft has indicated it is in talks with other major financial data vendors, as well as providers of economic, demographic, and scientific datasets.

Inside the Microsoft 365 product group, there is also speculation that MCP could eventually replace the older “data types” framework, unifying the user experience for pulling in structured information. Imagine asking Copilot to “Get the latest population and GDP for each country in my table” and having data flow in from the World Bank or IMF via MCP, just as easily as LSEG data does today.

For now, though, the focus is on ensuring the LSEG and Moody’s integration is robust. Microsoft plans to gather telemetry on query patterns, error rates, and user satisfaction before expanding the provider catalog. A roadmap update is expected in the second half of 2025, which may include support for Bloomberg, S&P Global, and other key financial data providers.

How to Get Started

If your organization is eligible and you hold the requisite licenses, enabling the integration is straightforward:

  1. Check your Copilot license. Navigate to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, select “Billing” > “Your products,” and verify that Microsoft 365 Copilot is assigned to the users who need it.
  2. Confirm LSEG/Moody’s subscriptions. Reach out to your account representative at each provider to ensure your enterprise agreement covers MCP-based data access. In many cases, existing LSEG Workspace or Moody’s Analytics contracts already do.
  3. Enable the connectors. In the Admin Center, go to “Settings” > “Integrated apps” or the new “Copilot connectors” section (rolling out gradually). Toggle on LSEG and Moody’s. You may need to provide a client ID or API key from the provider.
  4. Open Excel and start prompting. Once enabled, users will see a new “Ask Copilot about trusted data” prompt in the Copilot pane. They can begin requesting specific data points immediately. A brief tutorial video will appear for first-time users.

For those not yet licensed, Microsoft is offering a 30-day trial of Copilot for Microsoft 365, which includes the Excel integration, to organizations that sign up before October 2025. This trial provides a way to evaluate the feature with sample datasets before committing to a full subscription.

The Bottom Line

The addition of LSEG and Moody’s data transforms Copilot in Excel from a productivity booster to a genuine analytical partner for finance professionals. By leaning on the Model Context Protocol, Microsoft has created a scalable architecture that could eventually bring dozens of premium data sources into the flow of everyday Office work. For now, the rollout is targeted at enterprise customers with deep data needs, but as MCP matures and more providers come online, the barrier to entry is likely to fall. This is a clear signal that Microsoft views Copilot not just as a writing or summarizing tool, but as a front door to the world’s most valuable structured data—accessible through something as simple as a sentence.