Anthropic and FIS are building an AI agent to help banks police financial crimes

Anthropic and FIS are jointly developing an AI agent engineered for direct embedding inside financial institutions.

The system will help banks police financial crime by independently investigating drug traffickers, terrorists and other criminals using the financial system.

It draws on FIS’s extensive financial data and systems combined with Anthropic’s Claude AI.

The agent operates without constant user supervision and can amass evidence across multiple sources including transactions and account information.

This significantly reduces cost and time per case while human investigators retain final decision-making authority.

FIS CEO Stephanie Ferris confirmed Bank of Montreal and Amalgamated Bank will be among the first institutions to deploy the financial crimes agent.

It is expected to become widely available to clients in the second half of the year.

Anthropic engineers have already been embedded within FIS teams to accelerate development.

The partnership places advanced AI surveillance capabilities deep into the core operations of the global banking system.

Banks currently spend billions annually on anti-money-laundering efforts required by U.S. federal law.

The new AI agent integrates directly into existing FIS software infrastructure already underpinning a swath of the financial system.