Anthropic has launched ‘Claude for financial advisers’, pitching the artificial intelligence tool as a way for wealth managers to spend more time with clients.
The AI giant announced the launch this week, and said the programme ‘connects Claude to the tools your firm already runs on’ for tasks like meeting prep, portfolio analysis, and compliance checks.
US investment multinational BlackRock and tech firm Addepar are among the eleven companies Anthropic has partnered with to build the tool – with advisers able to ‘choose which of these to connect during guided setup’, the AI company said.
[See also: Is the AI boom bursting wealth management’s bubble?]
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Among the ‘skills’ listed by Anthropic that Claude can perform are pulling together an alternative investments brief, performing portfolio rebalance reviews, and consolidating a client’s holdings and recent account activity into a single brief.
AI has made significant inroads into the wealth management sector, with several firms implementing ChatGPT-style technologies, including J.P. Morgan Private Bank and St James’s Place.
Questions remain, though, on how the technology can best be used when advising UHNW clients.
[See also: The best wealth managers for high-net-worth clients]
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‘AI will definitely reduce the need for hundreds of people being involved in your investment process, but I don’t think it’s going to be replacing those who are in the ultra-high-net-worth space,’ David Scott, founder and managing partner of Scott Capital Partners, told Spear’s.
The complexity of the work his firm carries out for family office clients, Scott added, involving many different trusts and jurisdictions, meant clients ‘still want someone to navigate their way through’.
‘That’s why I believe there’s still going to be a strong market for that independent sort of firm that can do that without having to sell a product,’ he said.
In July this year, Eric Poirier, a former Palantir executive who joined Addepar as its CEO, told Spear’s he was aiming to bring the ‘DNA’ of his former employer into the family office and wealth management arena.
[See also: Addepar: Former Palantir exec brings firm’s ‘DNA’ to family offices]
Earlier this year, Spear’s ran an experiment with three experienced wealth advisers, and put several large language models through a hypothetical client scenario in which a 35-year-old tech founder was planning a £100 million exit – and looking for a comprehensive financial plan.
While the advisers who took part said they were impressed by the ‘comprehensive’ nature of the LLMs’ answers, some said there were clear limitations on the use of the technology within a wealth management context.
[See also: Is the AI boom bursting wealth management’s bubble?]
For instance, Nathan Valbonesi, associate director at Weatherbys Bank, told Spear’s: ‘The answers can feel like a shotgun approach, giving a bit of everything without depth, which can increase the burden on clients and advisers through information overload.’
He added: ‘AI doesn’t consider context, subtext or body language, and it doesn’t bring the human into the process, so it can’t explain why things matter or why you would take a certain approach.’
