Anthropic Unveils Claude Updates for Finance

AI startup Anthropic has introduced an expansion of its Claude for Financial Services platform.

This update includes an Excel add-in and new connectors to real-time market data and portfolio analytics, as well as new “pre-built Agent Skills” such as building discounted cash flow models and initiating coverage reports, the company wrote in a Monday (Oct. 27) blog post.

“Claude is already widely used by leading banking, asset management, insurance and financial technology companies,” the post read.

“It supports front-office tasks like client experience, middle-office tasks in underwriting, risk and compliance and back-office tasks like code modernization and legacy processes. With ongoing updates to our models and products specific to financial services, we expect Claude to become even better in roles like these.”

With Claude for Excel, the blog post adds, users can work directly with the artificial intelligence (AI) model in a sidebar in Microsoft Excel, letting Claude read, analyze, modify and create new Excel workbooks.

The connectors give Claude direct access to external tools and platforms such as Chronograph for private equity investors, joining existing connections to the likes of S&P Capital IQ, Daloopa, Morningstar and Pitchbook.

The new agent skills — folders featuring instructions, scripts and resources that Claude can use to complete given tasks —  include things like comparable company analysis and discounted cash flow models.

Claude for Financial Services is the first industry-specific service that Anthropic has formally introduced, Jonathan “JP” Pelosi, head of FSI at Anthropic, told PYMNTS when the product was unveiled in July.

“Where we saw a lot of traction early on was with these high-trust industries,” Pelosi said. “Our models, our solutions, are just very well positioned to help these firms.”

And as PYMNTS noted at the time, the AI industry still has much to provide before chief financial officers (CFOs) grow comfortable with the technology.

Research from the PYMNTS Intelligence report “The Agentic Trust Gap: Enterprise CFOs Push Pause on Agentic AI” shows that a persistent concern among CFOs is hallucinations, where an AI agent can go off script and subject firms to cascading payment errors and other inaccuracies.

Even as financial services companies recognize that AI offers a speed advantage at a time of tighter spreads and market volatility, they are nonetheless reluctant.

“For finance leaders, the message is stark: Harness AI’s momentum now, but build the guardrails before the next quarterly call — or risk owning the fallout,” the report said.