As some regulated enterprises cautiously expand their use of AI, platform and model makers are starting to offer bespoke versions to specific industries.

Anthropic is making its first step into that direction with the new Claude for Financial Services, essentially a special version of its Claude for Enterprise tier, that could soothe some of the fears of the sector around interoperability and tool use. Anthropic will also provide pre-built connectors to data providers, opening up discoverability routes for tools on Claude.

Jonathan Pelosi, head of industry for financial services at Anthropic, told VentureBeat that Anthropic models “were already particularly well-suited for financial workloads and we’ve been tailoring them to get better and better.” But while the Claude models offer enterprise solutions for financial services firms, Pelosi said the sector was also looking for more features from the Claude chat interface. 

“Unlike some competitors in the space who built a consumer app that became a sensation, or they built these new video generators and meme generators, that’s just never our focus,” Pelosi said. “We are enterprise first, so our models are uniquely well-suited to perform best in class against complicated enterprise workloads, which means complicated quantitative analysis, complex data extraction for the financial services industry at scale.”

Claude for Financial Services would offer users additional rate limits, especially since, Pelosi noted, many analysts often find themselves quickly hitting capacity limitations due to the size of their workloads. Unlike Claude for Enterprise, this financial services-specific platform will also include pre-built MCP connectors to financial data providers like FactSet, PitchBook, S&P Capital IQ and Morningstar, among others, and implementation support from Anthropic. 

The third big difference between Claude for Enterprise and Claude for Financial Services is the presence of a prompt library. Pelosi said some users had a difficult time translating their analytics workflow or needs into a prompt, so the prompt library can guide them. 

Pelosi said customers already using Claude for Enterprise are not obligated to move to the financial services version; however, added features like increased limits might prompt them to switch. 

How Anthropic is approaching the financial services ecosystem

Pelosi noted that many financial service institutions have strong engineers who can build AI applications. However, these companies’ core focus remains banking or insurance, so a platform that simplifies the process of connecting data to AI is essential. 

“What we’re trying to do is bring all this technology together under one roof,” said Pelosi. “Think of it as an out-of-the-box solution that’s easily configurable for the Bridgewaters, or the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Funds of the world, versus the alternative where they cobble this thing together on their own.”

Financial services companies have been building generative AI tools in various ways, creating AI platforms on their own using off-the-shelf models, or building on top of existing chatbots like Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT. BNY, for example, has been experimenting with AI agents for its AI platform Eliza. Capital One also built an agent that pulls on car dealership inventory and car loan data for auto sales. 

Startup Metal offers an assistant for financial analysts and private equity that reads and parses through 10-Ks, 10-Qs or 8-Ks. Rogo, another startup, also allows financial institutions to upload documents and set workflows. 

Allaying concerns

Anthropic is not alone in providing bespoke solutions for the financial sector. However, offering a guided setup and vetted access to data providers may go a long way for an industry wary of accidentally exposing itself to more risk. 

MCP can connect one company or its agent to another company by providing needed identification and tool use permissions. However, regulated industries express concern that it still lacks some important KYC and identity features. Many in the sector see the benefit of MCP servers to access critical financial data or other documents, but are waiting for mass adoption. 

At the same time, the financial services industry has been criticized for being too cautious in adopting the technology. 

Pelosi reiterated that Anthropic is focused on safety and responsibility, which is why he feels a solution specific to finance was the natural next step for them. Pelosi said that while Anthropic’s intention “is not to build a Claude for every vertical,” the company could extend bespoke features to other industries at some point. 

Anthropic also recently opened up Claude to more tool discoverability with partners like Canva, Notion, Stripe and Figma, providing more context to searches and activities on the app.