An AI tool for financial advisors knocked Charles Schwab down 7.4% in a single day in February. Raymond James fell 8.8% and LPL Financial 8.3% the same day, after Altruist unveiled an AI tax-planning tool for advisors.

Investors were selling a simple fear. AI would do the work these firms are paid for, and their fees would shrink.

Seven months later, Anthropic has built its own AI tool for advisors, and Schwab is helping bring it to them.

Anthropic released Claude for Financial Advisors on September 14, a set of connections and ready-made tasks for advisory firms. It says the plugin is available today, and it recommends its Enterprise plan.

The plugin connects Claude to 11 platforms advisors already use, including Schwab, BlackRock, Vanguard, Envestnet and SS&C Black Diamond. Through them, Claude can work with client account data, model portfolios, financial plans and records of client meetings.

The Schwab connection, for example, covers client balances, positions and transactions. Before this launch, Claude could already connect to Microsoft 365, Salesforce, FactSet, S&P Global and Morningstar.

The tasks cover meeting prep, follow-up notes, portfolio rebalancing reviews, estate and tax briefs, and compliance checks. Anthropic cites Kitces research showing that a typical advisory practice spends only a sixth of its time in client meetings.

Schwab made its own announcement the same day . The two companies said they will bring Claude to the more than 16,000 independent advisory firms that use Schwab to hold their clients’ assets.

Schwab says Claude is designed to work alongside the software those firms have already built their practices on.

Anthropic has not said how many firms have signed up. Firms that request licenses before the end of September get a one-time usage credit.

Why The Data Matters More Than The Model

An assistant for advisors is only as useful as what it can read. That means positions, account balances, financial plans and last quarter’s meeting notes.

None of those records sit with Anthropic. They sit with the custodians, the firms that hold client assets, and with the software companies advisors run their practices on.

Inside this product, Claude reaches client accounts through connections that Schwab, Vanguard and the other platforms provide.

Anthropic’s head of asset and wealth management, Peter Nolan, described the arrangement in February, when LPL expanded its work with Anthropic .

“They own what they build. We’re providing the building blocks, while the experts build on top.”

Anthropic is not the only lab courting finance. Its launch came days after OpenAI introduced a version of ChatGPT for investment bankers and equity researchers.

The more AI labs compete to serve finance, the more the firms holding the data can set the terms.

The February selloff treated wealth firms as the businesses AI would cut out. Anthropic’s launch treats them as the partners it needs to reach advisors.

We have made the same argument about enterprise software. The companies that own the records a business depends on gain leverage when AI arrives, because AI tools have to connect to them.

In February, fear of AI knocked down the same kind of firm that Anthropic now comes to for access.

Use AI scares to buy the companies that hold the records AI has to read.