Goldman Sachs working with Anthropic to automate accounting, compliance roles

(Sharecast News) - Goldman Sachs has been working with AI startup Anthropic to create AI agents to automate a growing number of roles within the bank. The company's chief information officer Marco Argenti told CNBC on Friday that for the past six months, Goldman has been working with embedded Anthropic engineers to co-develop autonomous agents in at least two specific areas: accounting for trades and transactions and client vetting and onboarding.

He told CNBC the firm is "in the early stages" of developing agents based on Anthropic's Claude model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take. He expects to launch the agents "soon" but declined to provide a specific date.

"Think of it as a digital co-worker for many of the professions within the firm that are scaled, are complex and very process intensive," he said. "Claude is really good at coding. Is that because coding is kind of special, or is it about the model's ability to reason through complex problems, step by step, applying logic?"

He said the bank was "surprised" at how capable Claude was at tasks other than coding, in particular in areas like accounting and compliance.

The view within Goldman now is that "there are these other areas of the firm where we could expect the same level of automation and the same level of results that we're seeing on the coding side", Argenti said.

He said the upshot is that, with the help of the agents in development, clients will be onboarded faster and issues with trade reconciliation or other accounting matters will be solved faster.

Argenti told CNBC that Goldman could next develop agents for tasks like employee surveillance or making investment banking pitchbooks.

While the bank employs thousands of people in the compliance and accounting functions where AI agents will soon operate, Argenti said it was "premature" to expect the technology to lead to job losses.

Still, Goldman could cut out third-party providers it uses today as AI technology matures, he said.

"It's always a tradeoff," Argenti said. "Our philosophy right now is that we're injecting capacity, which in most cases will allow us to do things faster, which translates to a better client experience and more business."