Barclays is extending its use of Anthropic’s Claude in an effort to accelerate software development, modernise its legacy systems and boost operational efficiency.
The UK-based banking giant — which earlier this year said that AI will help it make efficiency savings of about £2 billion — expects Claude Code adoption to reach 50% of its developer population by the end of 2026, rising to a majority of software engineers in 2027.
The expanded collaboration with Anthropic comes in the wake of Claude proving its value through tools such as the ‘colleague knowledge assistant,’ which helps UK employees find information and answers more quickly. The capability, which has been live since 2025, is powered by Claude through a retrieval-augmented generation architecture. More than 16,000 staffers have adopted the assistant, and it has handled over one million searches.
Meanwhile, within the global markets business, Claude models are used to classify, enrich, and determine the optimal processing route for incoming emails, helping to prioritise and ensure requests contain the information needed. The platform processes approximately 120,000 emails each day, reducing manual handling activity while helping staffers to identify and act on relevant information more efficiently.
Anne Marie Darling, group co-COO, Barclays, says: “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.”