Barclays, the British universal bank, is deepening its strategic collaboration with Anthropic to roll out secure, enterprise-grade AI systems across its global business.
The bank is extending Claude to speed up software development, modernize legacy systems, and make operations more efficient. Barclays expects 50% of its developers to be using Claude Code by the end of 2026, and a majority of its software engineers to be using it in 2027.
Building with Claude to serve customers better
Bringing AI into a large, complex, and heavily regulated organization takes both capable technology and disciplined governance. The expanded collaboration reflects a shared commitment to deploying AI responsibly and reliably, in ways that produce real results such as faster customer support.
Anne Marie Darling, Group Co-Chief Operating Officer at Barclays, said the real test of any technology is its effect on customers, clients, and colleagues. She said expanding Claude across Barclays is about more than adopting AI. It is about changing how work gets done by rethinking processes, improving customer and client experiences, and building a simpler, more efficient organization in a secure and well-governed environment. Cutting time spent on routine tasks and streamlining decisions lets colleagues apply their expertise to harder problems, speed up innovation, and deliver better outcomes for customers, clients, and the business.
Craig Bright, Group Co-Chief Operating Officer at Barclays, said increasingly capable AI is reshaping software engineering and cyber security. He said Barclays is moving toward AI as a more agentic capability built into how it builds, tests, secures, and runs technology. The bank uses Claude to modernize legacy platforms, raise software quality, and free technical experts to work on the most complex challenges. He added that skilled engineers, cyber specialists, and trusted AI could fundamentally improve how technology is developed and managed in large enterprises.
Knowledge assistance to speed up customer servicing
One example already in use is Barclays' Colleague Knowledge Assistant. It helps Barclays UK employees find information and answers faster when supporting the bank's more than 20 million UK retail customers.
The tool has been live since 2025 and runs on Claude through a retrieval-augmented generation architecture. More than 16,000 colleagues have adopted it, and it has handled over one million searches. The result is quicker access to information and faster support for customers.
Operational efficiency in Global Markets
In Barclays' Global Markets business, Claude models help streamline how client inquiries are processed and managed.
Teams use Claude to classify and enrich incoming emails and to decide the best processing route for each one. This helps prioritize requests and confirms they contain the information operations colleagues need to act. The platform handles roughly 120,000 emails a day, which reduces manual handling and helps colleagues find and act on relevant information more efficiently.
Scaling AI responsibly
As Barclays widens its use of AI, responsible deployment stays central to the partnership. The bank applies strong governance, security controls, and human oversight to its AI use cases, so the technology is deployed safely and effectively across the organization.
Paul Smith, Chief Commercial Officer at Anthropic, called the work with Barclays a significant milestone for Anthropic in the UK. He noted that Barclays serves millions of customers and clients worldwide, so its standard for AI is high, which is why it is rolling out Claude with strong security and oversight. He said Claude now helps 16,000 Barclays colleagues find answers for customers, sorts 120,000 emails a day, and will be used by most Barclays engineers by 2027. He added that very few institutions hold AI to such a high standard.
Looking ahead
The expanded partnership reflects Barclays' long-term commitment to using AI to improve productivity, strengthen resilience, and deliver better outcomes for customers and clients. By pairing Anthropic's frontier AI capabilities with Barclays' focus on responsible innovation, the two organizations aim to scale practical AI applications across one of the world's largest financial institutions.