Anthropic announced Personal Finance in a Thursday (Nov. 5) product update, saying that people will soon be able to connect their bank and card accounts to Claude, ask questions about their money in their own words and get answers in everyday language.
Anthropic is rolling out Personal Finance this week to Claude users on the Pro, Max and Ultra plans in the United States, according to the update. The company is rolling out the feature gradually, so users may not see it yet, per a support article.
Personal Finance is read-only; cannot move, manage or invest the user’s money; has no ads or sponsored recommendations; and offers no credit cards, loans or savings accounts of its own, the update said.
When asked questions by users, Personal Finance gives answers based on the user’s balances and transactions and explains any terms that are new to the user, per the update.
Personal Finance can answer questions such as “Where did my money go this month?”, “Am I spending more than I make?” and “What’s an APR, and what has mine cost me this year?” It can also provide a weekly spending chart, a calendar of due dates and a dashboard of numbers chosen by the user. It is not designed to give investment advice.
The connections to accounts are provided through Plaid, and they are made only when the user signs in to the bank through Plaid. The user can unlink the account at any time, per the update.
Plaid Chief Technology Officer Will Robinson described Plaid’s role in enabling secure connections to Claude’s Personal Finance feature in a Thursday (Nov. 5) blog post and said that Plaid has found that most consumers are willing to share personal information with Claude “when they see clear benefit.” Robinson added that the benefit of these connections is that Claude can provide tailored answers based on the user’s real numbers.
OpenAI announced in May that it had begun enabling select users of ChatGPT to connect their financial accounts, see a dashboard of their finances, ask the chatbot questions and receive answers that are grounded in their financial context. OpenAI said its linking of accounts was enabled by Plaid.
Anthropic said in its Thursday product update: “Personal Finance is a first step. For life’s bigger money decisions, we think people are best served by Claude working alongside the licensed professionals and regulated firms they trust. We’re exploring how to make that possible in Claude, and we’d like to hear from banks, wealth managers and financial services companies who want to help shape it.”
