On Thursday, Anthropic announced the addition of a new tool called “Personal Finance” aimed at helping users track their finances. With this tool, users can link their bank and credit card accounts through Plaid and ask Claude about personal financial matters. Anthropic stated that this feature is in read-only mode, which means that Personal Finance cannot transfer, manage, or invest users’ funds.
By allowing Claude to directly connect bank and credit card accounts, Anthropic is positioning this chatbot as a financial companion, helping people understand their expenses and figure out where their money is going, rather than just providing general suggestions.
With the launch of this feature, Claude is also catching up with OpenAI's ChatGPT. ChatGPT launched a similar personal finance tool in May, which also allows users to connect their financial accounts and to ask questions regarding issues from consumption patterns to long-term financial planning.
Anthropic wrote in a blog post: “Claude will provide answers to you in plain language, using information from your balance and transaction records, and will explain any new terms you may not be familiar with.” Anthropic also stated: “Like other features of Claude, Personal Finance does not contain any advertisements or sponsored recommendations, nor does it offer its own credit cards, loans, or savings accounts; therefore, your financial questions will receive direct answers.”
For example, at the end of the month, users can ask Claude: “Where did all my money go this month?” Subsequently, the chatbot will summarize the expenditures from the connected accounts and categorize them, such as rent and utilities, dining, and shopping. Users can also follow up with questions like “Is this more than usual?” or “What else have I missed?”
Anthropic indicates that this tool not only provides a summary of basic expenses but also analyzes transactions across connected accounts to identify potential issues such as duplicate deductions, unexpected fees, and continuously rising bills. Users can also ask broader questions, such as whether they have spent more money than they have earned. The tool can also explain financial concepts like APR (annual percentage rate), and by performing calculations, it shows users how much interest they have paid over the past year.
Of course, some people may be hesitant about connecting their financial accounts to the AI chatbot. Anthropic indicates that Claude can only access the name of each connected bank, the account name and type, the last four digits of the account number, the balance, the credit limit, as well as a transaction history of up to two years.
In addition, the company stated that when users chat between Personal Finance and Claude, these conversations will not be used to train their models.
Personal Finance will begin to be gradually available to subscribers in the United States, Pro, Max, and Ultra this week, in the form of beta.
The launch of this new tool coincides with the period when Anthropic continues to expand Claude into new vertical fields. For example, Anthropic launched Claude, for, Legal, Claude, for, and Financial Services earlier this year.
