Anthropic adds a Personal Finance tool to Claude in the US

In short: Anthropic says Claude now has a Personal Finance tool that can read your bank and credit card transactions and answer questions about your money.

What happened

Anthropic announced a new feature for its Claude chatbot called “Personal Finance.” It lets people connect their bank and credit card accounts and then ask Claude questions about their spending.

The connections run through Plaid, a service many apps use to link to banks (think of it like a secure bridge between an app and your bank). Anthropic says Claude’s access is read-only, meaning it can look at information but cannot move money, pay bills, or make investments.

Anthropic says the tool can summarize where your money went in a month by adding up purchases and sorting them into categories like rent, food, and shopping. It can also flag possible problems across accounts, such as duplicate charges, surprise fees, or bills that keep creeping up over time.

Users can ask for explanations of common money terms. For example, Claude can explain APR (annual percentage rate) and calculate how much interest you paid over the past year.

Anthropic says chats in the Personal Finance hub are not used to train its AI models. The company also says Claude can see limited account details, including bank name, account type, last four digits, balances, credit limits, and up to two years of transaction history.

The feature starts rolling out in beta this week to US users on Claude’s Pro, Max, and Ultra plans.

Why it matters

Many people already use apps to track spending, but they often show charts without much context. A tool like this aims to act more like a helpful assistant who can answer follow-up questions in plain language, while still raising new privacy questions about linking financial accounts to an AI service.

Source: TechCrunch AI