Barclays expands Anthropic partnership to scale Claude across global operations

Barclays is expanding its strategic collaboration with Anthropic to integrate Claude across its global banking operations. The bank is using the AI to modernize legacy platforms and accelerate software development, with a specific target for its technical staff. Barclays expects adoption of Claude Code to reach 50% of its developer population by the end of 2026, with that figure rising to a majority of software engineers in 2027.

The bank already uses Claude for customer support through its Colleague Knowledge Assistant. This tool, which has been live since 2025, uses a retrieval-augmented generation architecture to help employees find answers for more than 20 million UK retail customers. To date, more than 16,000 colleagues have adopted the assistant to handle over one million searches.

In the Global Markets business, Claude models manage incoming client enquiries. The system processes approximately 120,000 emails each day. It performs tasks such as classifying and enriching these messages to determine the optimal processing route, which helps operations staff prioritize requests and ensure they contain necessary information.

Craig Bright, Group Co-Chief Operating Officer at Barclays, stated that the bank is moving toward AI as an "agentic capability" embedded in how they build and operate technology. Anne Marie Darling, also a Group Co-Chief Operating Officer, noted that the expansion aims to build a "simpler, more efficient organization within a secure and well-governed environment."

Anthropic Chief Commercial Officer Paul Smith highlighted that Barclays is rolling out the technology with "strong security and oversight." Barclays applies human oversight and governance controls to its AI use cases.