Barclays Expands AI Assistants Across Operations, Enhancing Client Experience

British universal bank Barclays is expanding its strategic collaboration with Anthropic to integrate secure and enterprise-grade artificial intelligence (AI) systems across its global operations. This move marks a significant step towards upgrading the bank’s processes and improving client experience through the use of AI assistants.

As part of this rollout, Barclays aims to accelerate software development, modernize legacy systems, and enhance operational efficiency by extending Claude, Anthropic’s large language model, across the bank. The goal is for 50% of its developer population to adopt Claude Code by the end of 2026, with a majority of software engineers expected to use it in 2027.

The integration of AI across Barclays’ complex and highly regulated organization requires both capable technology and disciplined governance. Expanding its collaboration with Anthropic reflects a shared commitment to deploying AI responsibly, reliably, and effectively. This approach enables real outcomes such as providing faster support for customers.

Anne Marie Darling, Group Co-Chief Operating Officer at Barclays, emphasized the importance of measuring technology’s impact on clients, colleagues, and customers. ‘The true measure of any technology is the impact it has on our stakeholders,’ she said. Expanding Claude’s use across Barclays goes beyond adopting AI; it transforms how work gets done by reimagining processes, enhancing client experiences, and building a simpler organization within a secure environment.

Craig Bright, Group Co-Chief Operating Officer at Barclays, highlighted the transformative potential of increasingly capable AI systems in software engineering and cyber security. ‘We’re moving towards AI as an agentic capability embedded within how we build, test, secure, and operate technology,’ he said. At Barclays, Claude is being used to modernize legacy platforms, improve software quality, and allow technical experts to focus on complex challenges.

One example of the partnership’s success is the Colleague Knowledge Assistant, which helps UK employees find information more quickly when supporting their 20 million retail customers. This capability has been live since 2025 and uses Claude through a retrieval-augmented generation architecture. Over 16,000 colleagues have adopted it, handling over one million searches.

The result of this partnership is faster access to information and quicker support for clients. The Colleague Knowledge Assistant demonstrates the potential of AI assistants in streamlining processes and enhancing client experiences.

Within Barclays’ Global Markets business, Claude models are helping streamline how client inquiries are processed and managed. Teams use these models to classify, enrich, and determine the optimal processing route for incoming emails, prioritizing requests and ensuring they contain necessary information for operations colleagues to take action. The platform handles approximately 120,000 emails each day, reducing manual handling activity while enabling colleagues to identify relevant information more efficiently.

As Barclays continues to expand its use of AI, responsible deployment remains central to the partnership. The bank applies robust governance, security controls, and human oversight to ensure technology is deployed safely and effectively across the organization.

Paul Smith, Chief Commercial Officer at Anthropic, noted that this collaboration reflects a significant milestone for Anthropic in the UK. ‘Barclays serves millions of customers worldwide,’ he said. Their standard for AI deployment is high, which is why they are rolling out Claude with strong security and oversight.

The expanded partnership between Barclays and Anthropic marks a long-term commitment to using AI to improve productivity, strengthen resilience, and enhance client outcomes. By combining Anthropic’s frontier AI capabilities with Barclays’ focus on responsible innovation, the organizations aim to scale practical AI applications across one of the world’s largest financial institutions.