AI in Financial Services: Anthropic Connects to Core Data Sources, Delivers Industry-Specific Skills

Following on the heels of new financial services AI software from Google Cloud and OpenAI, Anthropic this week released Claude for Financial Advisors, which provides several connectors to third-party data and pre-built skills for common advisor tasks.

In so doing, the company extends the AI industry’s push into AI models and specialized tools built specifically for the requirements of vertical industries. Anthropic noted that its product aims to automate some of the manual research, prep, and documentation tasks that can consume significant time that detracts from financial client engagement.

While Anthropic provided customer endorsements of its work, it was notably different than the recent Google Cloud and OpenAI announcements that emphasized design partnerships with their customers, suggesting potentially greater alignment by the former two providers with customer needs, which may play out as an advantage over time.

Anthropic also emphasized its focus on connectors, while OpenAI noted with several key partners that it’s embedding their data directly into its AI model for tighter, native integration.

Claude for Financial Advisors connectors link financial pros to their custodians, asset managers, and wealth technology providers and brings them closer to working with all of a client’s information in one screen. Newly announced financial services connectors link Claude to:

• BlackRock for portfolio development expertise, model portfolios, and institutional analytics
• Charles Schwab for custodial data including balances, positions, transactions, cost basis, alerts, and money-movement status
• Orion for portfolio reporting and CRM insights
• Wealth.com for a structured view of clients’ estate and tax status such as trust and will summaries
• Vanguard for information on model portfolios and advisor investment solutions

In all, the company detailed 11 new financial services connectors.

Out-of-the-Box Skills

Skills use the various data sets to help advisors with specific tasks including meeting prep, portfolio analysis, and compliance checks.

Firms can adopt the pre-packaged skills from the Claude repository or adapt them to their own workflow and corporate standards.  The eight newly launched skills include:

• Alternative investments brief, which pulls a customer’s current alternative investments from a connected data source into a meeting-ready summary
• Compliance and AI policy, which highlights content that may warrant additional compliance review based on user-configured criteria and supports AI-governance documentation processes.
• Estate and tax brief, which checks a client’s estate plan against actual account titling and beneficiaries, looks back at the prior year’s taxes, and can create CRM follow-up tasks, so mismatches surface for the advisor to review.
• Post-meeting notes and follow-up, which turns a transcript into a client summary, a recap email, and CRM tasks in one fell swoop, instead of an advisor doing each by hand after the call.

Anthropic’s collection of industry-specific skills addresses many of the core functions – and common value-adds – that advisors provide to clients. Combined with connectors to critical data sources, Anthropic is advancing the range of tools and capabilities needed by financial services firms of all sizes to make it easier and more impactful to embrace AI for customer-facing elements of their business. That puts AI ever closer to the center of the financial services business.

More Vertical Industry AI Insights:

• AI in Healthcare: OpenAI Connects Clinicians to Patient Medical Records Inside ChatGPT
• Google Cloud Extends Industry AI Push With Gemini Enterprise for Legal
• AI in Retail: Albertsons Bags Larger Grocery Orders; Walmart Workers Find Context Is Critical
• Google Cloud’s 4-Point Plan for Industry Specific Success With Gemini Enterprise for Industries

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