The recent Anthropic announcement that it is releasing 10 ready-to-run AI agent templates “for the most time-consuming work in financial services” means the agent-focused era for wealth management teams and financial advisors is building momentum.
The Anthropic agents are aimed at building pitchbooks, screening KYC files and closing the books at month-end.
Recent research by Google Cloud notes that new AI agents are becoming the next major driver for growth by assisting tasks in multiple areas crucial to financial services, and “77% of financial services executives report that their organization is achieving positive ROI within the first year.”
Anthropic suggests two ways to put its new agents to work: as a plugin in Claude Cowork or Claude Code, using the software already on the user’s desktop. “Hand the pitch agent a target list, and you can get back a comps model in Excel, a pitchbook drafted in PowerPoint and a cover note ready in Outlook,” Anthropic points out in a release.
“As a Claude Managed Agent, the same template runs autonomously on the Claude Platform, for work that spans a whole book of deals or a nightly schedule,” the release notes. “The cookbooks stand it up with the building blocks a firm would otherwise engineer themselves: long-running sessions that can work throughout a multi-hour deal close, per-tool permissions, managed credential vaults and a full audit log in the Claude Console where compliance and engineering teams can inspect every tool call and decision.”
For generative AI in wealth management and financial advisory rolls, first generation AI tools cluster around a few recurring uses, including meeting prep and notes, internal search, planning support, plan reviews and rebalancing.
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in 2024 announced an addition to its suite of AI tools for financial advisors, called AI @ Morgan Stanley Debrief, that, with client consent, generates notes on a financial advisors’ behalf in client meetings and points to action items. After meetings, it summarizes key points, creates an email for an advisor to edit and send and saves a note into Salesforce. Morgan Stanley pointed out that financial advisors praised the tools for assisting in client meetings and freeing up time to focus on decision making, instead of manual notes generation. The bank has been busy in the AI universe, announcing in 2023 a relationship with OpenAI. That year, Morgan Stanley rolled out an AI-powered chatbot “offering quick access to all of Morgan Stanley’s intellectual capital.”
In January 2026, Raymond James announced the launch of Rai, its proprietary digital AI operations agent. Rai “leverages natural language processing and generative AI to provide immediate, curated natural language answers and guidance to operational questions based on multiple firm knowledge bases while intelligently evolving based on user activities and preferences,” noted the tool’s announcement.
Rai is an interactive question and answer generative AI chat tool that brings together insights from across Raymond James systems and policies to augment informed decision making, “while maintaining full human-in-the-loop oversight,” the company notes. The agent learns over time to consider its user’s role and responsibilities to deliver a personalized experience. Following a successful pilot, Rai will become available to specific business units with plans for an enterprise-wide roll out in the coming quarters.
Recent enhancements to the firm’s suite of AI-based tools and technologies include:
A CRM AI note assistant to optimize note taking and easily identify next steps and action items, as well as activities summaries to scan a client’s recent actions to provide an overview of notes, emails and tasks for meeting preparation; Zoom AI meeting summaries integrated with CRM to easily create and track multiple related activities, notes and tasks as well as draft recap emails; generative AI Search to enhance intuitive question and answer search in the firm’s internal knowledge databases; secure access to ChatGPT enterprise and Microsoft Copilot integration.
Ultimately, the prize may go to the AI app or suite of tools that integrates best into the established technology stack relied upon by financial services, advisory and wealth management teams, from customer relationship management to planning software to portfolio management, as well as risk management solutions.
Banks are also moving into the AI business directly, not just using AI tools made for them. In February, Anthropic announced it is creating a joint venture with Blackstone, BNY, Goldman Sachs and other firms to sell AI tools to businesses. “The company is expected to act as a consulting arm for Anthropic and help teach businesses — including the private-equity firms’ portfolio companies — how to incorporate AI across their operations,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
