Anthropic, FIS unveil AI agents to help banks combat financial crime

Artificial intelligence is soon to step into another role: AI agents will police millions of bank accounts to detect and fight financial crimes in the wake of growing cyber related threats.

To make this possible, Anthropic and Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) have entered a partnership to develop new AI tools specifically designed for banks.

Under this partnership, the both companies will develop and deploy agentic AI systems to safeguard financial institutions against nefarious designs and criminal activities, such as money laundering, terrorism and drug trafficking.

The primary goal is to leverage Anthropic’s Claude to automate complex financial tasks by using FIS’s data infrastructure.

The first AI tool will automate investigation of financial crimes and thoroughly screen the perpetrators, including drug traffickers, and other criminals using the financial system, said FIS CEO Stephanie Ferris.

The tool will be first tested by Bank of Montreal and Amalgamated Bank and later in the second half of the year, the financial crime agents will be available for other clients as well.

Talking about its efficiency, the tool is expected to reduce the time and cost of anti-money laundering efforts through automation in collecting evidence from various sources.

Although these agents perform tasks autonomously, Ferris clarified that human investigators will still make the final calls on whether to pursue cases despite automation of data gathering related to account information and transactions.

The move comes when banks are already spending billions annually on anti-money laundering efforts as the Trump administration signals a shift toward focusing on high-risk crimes rather than technical compliance.