Trust Infrastructure Index (TII) HEART Standard
How it works
TII starts with the same data source as Trust Credits: Φ scores produced by Guardian assessment of MAP-States behavioral evidence, attested by the Behavioral Oracle. Where Trust Credits are the transactional instrument — units an organization retires for regulatory, procurement, or insurance purposes — TII is the analytical instrument. It rates the organization for the parties making decisions about it.
The five scoring dimensions
| Dimension | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Governance Quality (GQ) | 35% | Weighted average of Φ scores across all certified Divisions |
| Division Coverage (DC) | 20% | Proportion of applicable Divisions where certification is held |
| Certification Currency (CC) | 15% | Recency of Guardian assessments; expired certifications score zero |
| Governance Consistency (GC) | 15% | Variance across Φ scores — rewards uniform quality, penalizes imbalance |
| Accountability Infrastructure (AI) | 15% | Correction pathways, monitoring systems, transparency practices, governance leadership |
The composite formula is:
TII Composite = (GQ × 0.35) + (DC × 0.20) + (CC × 0.15) + (GC × 0.15) + (AI × 0.15)
The rating scale
| Rating | TII Composite | Governance quality |
|---|---|---|
| AAA | ≥ 0.92 | Exceptional; industry leader across multiple Divisions |
| AA | 0.87 – 0.919 | Excellent; strong performance across certified Divisions |
| A | 0.82 – 0.869 | Strong; consistent above-threshold performance |
| BBB | 0.75 – 0.819 | Adequate; meets baseline certification — investment grade floor |
| BB | 0.70 – 0.749 | Below certification threshold or incomplete Division coverage |
| B | 0.60 – 0.699 | Weak governance; significant gaps |
| CCC | 0.50 – 0.599 | Poor; major deficiencies |
| CC | 0.40 – 0.499 | Very poor; immediate remediation required |
| C | 0.25 – 0.399 | No meaningful governance architecture |
| D | < 0.25 or unassessed | No BGF assessment conducted |
Modifiers (+/-) apply within grades AA through CCC. BBB and above is investment grade. Below BBB is speculative grade.
Three index products
Entity-level TII is the primary product: a single letter grade for an organization, published in the HEART certification registry with full methodology disclosure. Any party can trace the rating to its component scores, through those scores to Guardian assessments, and through the assessments to Behavioral Oracle-attested evidence.
Sector-level TII aggregates entity ratings into industry benchmarks. A media company rated A in a sector averaging AA faces market pressure to improve. An insurer evaluating a sector averaging BB faces a different risk picture than one evaluating a sector averaging A.
Division-level TII disaggregates organizational ratings by Division, enabling domain-specific evaluation. A school district evaluating an educational AI vendor cares specifically about the HEART-DI (Developmental Interaction) Division rating, not the vendor’s aggregate. A hospital cares about HEART-SE (Somatic/Embodied Interface).
Why it matters
ESG ratings face a credibility crisis. Correlation between major ESG providers runs between 0.42 and 0.47 — meaning the same company can receive contradictory governance assessments depending on which agency rates it. The root cause is structural: ESG ratings are built on self-reported data that each agency interprets through its own proprietary methodology. No standardized measurement instrument. No independent assessment class. No tamper-evident evidence chain.
TII is architecturally different. The evidence is behavioral data from actual AI processing, not operator self-reporting. The assessors are structurally independent Guardians, not agency analysts interpreting disclosed data. The methodology is fully published — BGF formula, dimension weights, scoring criteria, grade thresholds, all open. The EU ESG Ratings Regulation (effective July 2026) requires methodology transparency, conflict-of-interest management, and quality assurance from rating providers; TII’s architecture satisfies these requirements by design, not by retrofit.
The financial materiality signal is growing. AI governance failures create litigation exposure. Regulatory non-compliance creates operational risk. Broken consumer trust affects adoption. TII provides the instrument to capture these risks in a format markets already know how to price.
The analog
Bond ratings translate complex issuer creditworthiness into letter grades that market participants use without becoming fixed income specialists. HVC certifies individual AI systems the way individual bonds get rated. TII rates the organization the way Moody’s rates the issuer — aggregating across the portfolio to produce the number that institutional capital, insurance underwriters, and procurement officers actually consume.