Advancing Claude for Financial Services

Anthropic has expanded its Claude for Financial Services offering by introducing a beta Excel add-in, new real-time data connectors, and specialized Agent Skills. These updates leverage Sonnet 4.5, which achieved 55.3% accuracy on the Vals AI Finance Agent benchmark, to automate time-consuming financial workflows directly within industry-standard tools.

Claude for Excel Research Preview

Claude for Excel is now available in beta as a research preview for Max, Enterprise, and Teams users. This integration allows Claude to operate within a Microsoft Excel sidebar, enabling the model to read, analyze, modify, and create workbooks while maintaining full transparency by tracking and explaining its changes.

Key capabilities of the Excel add-in include:

• Financial Modeling: Discussing spreadsheet logic and providing real-time guidance on modeling.
• Workbook Modification: Modifying sheets while preserving formula dependencies and structure.
• ** uma Formula Management:** Debugging and fixing cell formulas.
• Template Population: Filling templates with new assumptions and data.
• Content Creation: Building entirely new spreadsheets from scratch.

This tool complements existing integrations where Claude can create and edit Excel and PowerPoint files, connect to Microsoft 365 for searching emails and Teams conversations, and integrate with Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Real-Time Market Data Connectors

Anthropic has introduced several new connectors to provide Claude with immediate access to external financial platforms and live information. These build upon previous connectors for S&P Capital IQ, Daloopa, Morningstar, and PitchBook.

New connectors include:

• LSEG: Provides live market data, including equities, foreign exchange rates, fixed income pricing, macroeconomic indicators, and analyst estimates.
• Moody’s: Offers proprietary credit ratings, research, and company data for over 600 million public and private companies.
• Aiera: Delivers real-time earnings call transcripts and summaries of investor events.
• Third Bridge: (Via Aiera) Provides a library of expert insight interviews and industry analysis.
• Chronograph: Supplies operational and financial information for private equity portfolio monitoring and due diligence.
• Egnyte: Enables secure search of internal data rooms and investment documents with governed access controls.
• MT Newswires: Provides global multi-asset class news on financial markets and economies.

Specialized Agent Skills for Finance

Anthropic has released six new Agent Skills—pre-configured folders containing instructions, scripts, and resources—that allow Claude to perform specific high-value financial tasks across Claude.ai, Claude Code, and the API. These skills are currently in preview for Max, Enterprise, and Teams users.

The new financial skills include:

• Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Models: Creating full free cash flow projections, WACC calculations, and sensitivity tables.
• Comparable Company Analysis: Generating valuation multiples and operating metrics that can be refreshed with new data.
• Initiating Coverage Reports: Producing industry analysis, company deep-dives, and valuation frameworks.
• Earnings Analyses: Extracting metrics, guidance changes, and management commentary from quarterly transcripts.
• Due Diligence Data Packs: Converting data room documents into Excel spreadsheets containing customer lists, contract terms, and financial data.
• Company Teasers and Profiles: Creating condensed overviews for pitch books and buyer lists.

Enterprise Adoption and Impact

Claude is utilized across front, middle, and back-office functions in banking, asset management, and insurance. Industry partners have highlighted specific operational gains:

• Engineering Efficiency: Block reports that 75% of its engineers save 8 to 10+ hours per week using an open-source AI agent (codename goose) for SQL queries, noting that the Claude family performed best for their measured tasks.
• Developer Velocity: Francisco Partners reports that portfolio companies using Claude Code are completing complex tasks in hours rather than days.
• Operational Integration: RBC Capital Markets notes that Claude excels at integrating multiple data sources and automating time-consuming workflows.
• Security and Privacy: Brex and Visa emphasize that Anthropic's focus on data privacy and secure foundations is critical for enterprise financial deployment.