Barclays Expands Anthropic Partnership, Targets Claude Code for Most Engineers by 2027
Barclays expects half its developers to use Claude Code by the end of 2026, as it extends Anthropic's AI across operations and engineering.
Barclays is expanding its strategic collaboration with Anthropic to roll the AI company's Claude models out across its global operations, with a focus on software development, legacy modernisation and operational efficiency, Anthropic announced on 1 October 2026.
As part of the rollout, Barclays expects adoption of Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding tool, to reach 50% of its developer population by the end of 2026, rising to a majority of its software engineers in 2027.
"Software engineering and cyber security are both being reshaped by increasingly capable AI systems," said Craig Bright, Group Co-Chief Operating Officer at Barclays. "We're moving towards AI as an increasingly agentic capability embedded within how we build, test, secure, and operate technology. At Barclays, we're using Claude to help modernize legacy platforms, improve software quality, and allow our technical experts to focus on the most complex challenges."
The bank already runs Claude in two operational settings. In Barclays UK, the Colleague Knowledge Assistant helps staff find information and answers more quickly when serving the bank's more than 20 million UK retail customers. Live since 2025 and built on a retrieval-augmented generation architecture, it has been adopted by more than 16,000 colleagues and has handled over one million searches.
In the Global Markets business, Claude models classify and enrich incoming client emails and determine the best processing route for each, so that requests reach operations colleagues with the information needed to act. The platform processes approximately 120,000 emails a day, which the announcement says reduces manual handling.
"Expanding the use of Claude across Barclays is about more than adopting AI. It is about transforming how work gets done: reimagining processes, enhancing customer and client experiences, and building a simpler, more efficient organization within a secure and well-governed environment," said Anne Marie Darling, Group Co-Chief Operating Officer at Barclays.
The announcement says the bank applies governance, security controls and human oversight to its AI use cases.
"Our work with Barclays is a significant milestone for us in the UK," said Paul Smith, Chief Commercial Officer at Anthropic. He added: "Claude now helps 16,000 Barclays' colleagues find answers for customers, sorts 120,000 emails a day, and will be in the hands of most Barclays engineers by 2027."
The deal is Anthropic's latest move into financial services, following its work with FIS on an AI agent to fight financial crime. Among UK banks, HSBC took a similar route with its generative AI partnership with Mistral AI.
