Anthropic barred from model training in Schwab’s Claude deal

Schwab’s new deal to integrate Claude into its custodian network of more than 16,000 RIAs includes a clause that prevents Anthropic from keeping data to train its AI models. 

“Our specific agreement with Anthropic via our connector is that no data will be retained for model training,” Alison Dooher, head of AI for Schwab Advisor Services, told InvestmentNews. “That is one of the things that we felt very important as part of this agreement, [...] we want to ensure that any of the conversation input or output that is happening through this connector is not retained for model training.” 

Schwab’s announcement at Future Proof made it the first RIA custodian to integrate Claude for Advisors, which is Anthropic’s new AI tool designed to help advisors with tasks such as meeting preparation, financial plan updates, analytics, drafting client follow-ups, and identifying which clients are due for required minimum distributions (RMDs) or reviewing account balances for other gaps.  

Anthropic’s enterprise plan for Claude already defaults to not retaining chat information for model training. However, Anthropic has agreed to extend that provision throughout Schwab Advisor Services, including advisors who have Claude subscriptions in tiers below the enterprise level. 

“The enterprise licenses, for what it's worth, with Anthropic already default to no model training,” added Dooher. “But there are other licenses that don't, and we wanted to ensure that we superseded that and there would be no model training as part of this.” 

Client account numbers will be hidden from Anthropic as part of Schwab’s deal. “We are limiting the data set more so than what you would see directly in Schwab Advisor Center. So account numbers will be masked. We are not passing things like social security numbers or date of birth,” said Dooher.  

Schwab’s added privacy protections with Anthropic come as the AI giant is making a separate push into personal finance with its development of “Claude Money,” a mobile app feature that connects to a user’s bank accounts, according to a report from TestingCatalog. The reported feature has already drawn pushback from Altruist CEO Jason Wenk, who expressed concern around advisors connecting their data to Claude. 

Wenk’s AI-enabled RIA custodian Altruist recently sold to Vanguard, which has now nearly simultaneously partnered with Anthropic to integrate Claude for Financial Advisors. Beyond Schwab and Vanguard, the Claude plugin’s launch partners include BlackRock, Addepar, Envestnet, iCapital, Orion, Wealthbox, Wealth.com and Zocks. 

“I wouldn't say that this might be the sole tool that advisors are using. This might be a supplement to their existing tech stack,” Dooher said of Schwab’s integration with Claude. 

Schwab’s integration with Claude is read-only, meaning that advisors will not be able to manually change data surfaced by the chatbot. Dooher described this as a “walk before run” approach with Anthropic, whose head of asset and wealth management Peter Nolan will be a guest speaker at Schwab’s IMPACT conference in October.  

“We felt in order to maintain sensitivity to our custodial books and records, we really wanted to understand the demand and the usage first, and where we might want to accelerate into something that would allow an agent to act with human in the loop,” said Dooher. “And ensure that we've crossed all of those governance standards appropriately before we take that next step.” 

Dooher shared in a LinkedIn post three weeks ago that she was looking to hire a Director of AI Integration Standards to join her team at Schwab Advisor Services. The executive described client portfolio rebalancing as one task that advisors could automate with Claude under future potential workflows offered in Schwab Advisor Services.  

“We see things like potentially advisors wanting to be able to design complete workflows. How would they want to authorize potentially a request to update beneficiary information would be a good one [for example],” said Dooher. “So how do we lace together all of those appropriate components so that the end client has the ability to be in the loop, so to speak, on any of those account and information updates.”