The ratio of judgment to repetition skews closely towards repetition, and that ratio has not modified in a long time. In 2026 it’s beginning to change.
AI will not be sensible sufficient to exchange monetary judgement (but). But for the repetitive half of the job: the formatting, the primary drafts, the matching, the narrating, AI is now quick, correct and built-in sufficient to be genuinely helpful on the identical afternoon you set it up.
How Finance Teams Use Claude for Investment Banking Work
Investment banking runs on paperwork. CIMs, teasers, course of letters, purchaser lists, merger fashions, pitch decks. The work is actual and repetitive: an analyst constructing a one-pager for a deal teaser spends hours formatting, sourcing information, and structuring the identical 4 quadrants they constructed final week for a unique firm.
Anthropic launched a devoted Investment Banking plugin for Claude Cowork on February 24, 2026. It is open supply, free to put in, and offers Claude 7 slash instructions backed by 9 underlying expertise throughout three workflow classes: deal supplies, displays, and transaction assist. Quick terminology observe because it comes up all through this information: expertise are the area data modules that activate robotically when related; instructions are the slash instructions you invoke explicitly. Each command calls a number of underlying expertise.
What it comprises
Deal supplies: CIM drafting, teaser era, course of letters, purchaser lists, and information pack extraction from current paperwork. Presentations: strip profiles and pitch deck inhabitants utilizing your agency’s branded PowerPoint templates. Transaction assist: merger mannequin development and a deal tracker for reside milestones and motion gadgets.
Installing it
The plugin requires Claude Cowork (desktop app, Enterprise plan or above) or Claude Code (Pro Plan or above.) Install the financial-analysis core plugin first, it supplies the shared modeling instruments and all MCP information connectors that the IB plugin is determined by. Then add investment-banking on high.
Via Claude Code:
claude plugin market add anthropics/financial-services-plugins
claude plugin set up financial-analysis@financial-services-plugins
claude plugin set up investment-banking@financial-services-plugins
Via Cowork desktop: Settings → Plugins → Add market from GitHub → enter https://github.com/anthropics/financial-services-plugins → set up financial-analysis, then investment-banking.
/one-pager [Company Name] Generates a single PowerPoint slide with 4 quadrants: Overview, Business, Financials, and Ownership. Respects your current template’s margins and branding. This is the strip profile that populates pitch books and purchaser lists.
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/cim [Company Name] Produces a full Confidential Information Memorandum: government abstract, enterprise overview, monetary evaluation, and market positioning sections. Claude drafts the construction and content material; your crew fills in proprietary information and tightens the narrative.
Rest of the instructions for you to attempt your self:
/teaser [Company Name] Generates an nameless one-page firm teaser for early-stage deal advertising and marketing. Same core construction because the CIM however stripped of figuring out data.
/buyer-list [Company Name] Assembles a strategic and monetary purchaser universe. Claude categorizes potential acquirers by kind, sizes the match, and buildings the output for simple evaluate and prioritization.
/merger-model [Acquirer acquiring Target] Builds an accretion/dilution M&A evaluation. Output contains sources and makes use of schedule, professional forma financials, and sensitivity evaluation on buy worth and synergies.
/process-letter [Deal Description] Produces bid directions and course of correspondence for a reside transaction.
/deal-tracker Tracks lively offers, milestones, and motion gadgets. A structured mission administration view for reside mandates.
How to get essentially the most out of it
The plugin ships with generic methodology. The actual worth comes while you customise the ability recordsdata for your agency: drop in your terminology, reference your branded PowerPoint template within the ability recordsdata, alter the CIM construction to your own home format. After that, each CIM draft, each one-pager, each purchaser record comes out in your voice.
Claude carries full context between Excel and PowerPoint in a single session. An analyst can run /merger-model, replace assumptions in Excel, then ask Claude to construct the abstract slide in PowerPoint with out switching instruments or shedding context. This cross-app workflow is in analysis preview for paid plans as of February 2026.
Honest caveat
These instructions produce first drafts, not closing deliverables. The CIM wants your agency’s proprietary market intelligence. The purchaser record wants your banker’s community data. The merger mannequin wants human verification of each assumption earlier than it goes to a consumer. Use these as the place to begin, not the completed product.
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Using Claude for Comparable Company Analysis, DCF Models and Valuation Outputs
That failure mode has a repair, and it’s the financial-analysis plugin.
Installing it
claude plugin market add anthropics/financial-services-plugins
claude plugin set up financial-analysis@financial-services-plugins
Once lively, you get two instructions plus MCP connectors to each main monetary information supplier.
/comps [Company Name]
Runs a comparable firm evaluation. Claude selects the peer group, pulls present buying and selling multiples from linked information sources, builds the comps desk, and outputs a formatted Excel workbook with industry-standard construction. The peer choice is the one factor you evaluate and alter – that judgment can’t be automated. Everything else: pulled, calculated, formatted.
/dcf [Company Name]
Builds a full DCF. The plugin’s methodology layer is what makes this totally different from a uncooked immediate: it pulls the present authorities yield curve from LSEG to set the risk-free fee, retrieves historic fairness costs and beta to anchor the price of fairness, and checks for inside consistency earlier than outputting. The inputs are market-driven and traceable, not assumed.
Using Claude in Excel with out slash instructions
Scenario evaluation runs conversationally. “What happens if we delay all Q2 hires by one quarter?” Claude updates each affected cell, preserves the formulation, and exhibits the precise runway affect. You discover with out touching the mannequin construction. Formula debugging works the identical manner: as an alternative of looking by means of cells, you get a direct rationalization of which cell is feeding the error, what format it expects, and the place the mismatch originates.
MCP connectors
If you may have lively information entitlements with S&P Global, LSEG, Daloopa, PitchBook, Moody’s, or FactSet and have configured them in your Claude settings, they’re reside in Excel robotically. “Pull [Company]’s LTM revenue, EBITDA, capex, and net debt from Daloopa” populates the cells instantly. “Get the current 10-year government yield from LSEG” updates the risk-free fee reside. The handbook export-format-paste step disappears.
Where to start out
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Using Claude for Month-End Reconciliation
Account reconciliation sounds easy and destroys days. Every shut cycle, an accountant exports the GL stability, pulls the financial institution assertion or subledger element, manually matches transactions, investigates exceptions, paperwork the reconciling gadgets, and builds a workpaper for audit. Then AR. Then AP. Then intercompany. Then prepaids. By the time the working account is completed, it’s day three of shut.
Anthropic’s finance plugin (totally different from monetary evaluation plugin) ships with a structured reconciliation ability that understands the methodology and applies it persistently. It is a separate plugin from the financial-analysis plugin utilized in sections 1 and a couple of, and lives in a unique repository.
Installing the finance plugin
claude plugin market add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
claude plugin set up finance@knowledge-work-plugins
Or through Cowork desktop: Settings → Plugins → Add market → https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins → set up finance.
Once put in, Claude has entry to 6 expertise: journal-entry-prep, reconciliation, close-management, financial-statements, variance-analysis, and audit-support. Each has a corresponding slash command.
Running your first reconciliation
Drop your GL export and financial institution assertion into the Cowork mission. Then run:
/reconciliation money 2026-02
Claude compares either side, calculates the distinction, and builds the workpaper. It categorizes every reconciling merchandise: timing variations that can clear subsequent interval, gadgets that want a journal entry, and exceptions that want investigation. It assigns growing older buckets and flags something over your materiality threshold.
Note: For AR subledger reconciliation, use:
/reconciliation accounts-receivable 2026-02
The compounding curve
Month 1: Claude applies the generic methodology. Roughly 60% of things match robotically. You resolve the exceptions in the identical Cowork session: kind out the sample in plain language: “this vendor always settles two days after invoice date,” “this intercompany charge posts to cost center 402 but should be 408,” “this bank fee has no GL equivalent and should be flagged as a new journal entry.” Claude incorporates these explanations into the workpaper and carries the patterns into the following session.
Month 2: Claude applies what it realized. It handles 85% or extra of matches by itself. The exception record shrinks, and the gadgets it flags are genuinely uncommon.
Month 3: The reconciliation takes half the time it did in Month 1.
These numbers come from a single practitioner’s account (David Dors, Building Profit, February 2026), not a managed benchmark. Treat them as directional. The compounding sample is actual no matter precise percentages, each sample you educate Claude in Month 1 carries ahead.
With ERP connectors
If your group has linked NetSuite, SAP, or one other ERP through MCP, Claude pulls GL balances and subledger element robotically. Without connectors, you paste information or add recordsdata. The reconciliation works both manner.
The sincere limitation
The finance plugin runs inside Cowork, which requires Claude Desktop to be open in your machine. Overnight batch reconciliations, high-volume AP matching, and ERP-native reconciliation throughout lots of of accounts want server-side infrastructure, not a desktop app. For that scale, purpose-built platforms are the precise instruments. They encode three-way matching logic, pay as you go amortization guidelines, and intercompany netting at a depth a general-purpose agent doesn’t.
What Claude’s plugin handles effectively is the analyst-driven shut workflow: one accountant, a handful of key accounts, a month-to-month cadence the place the time financial savings compound. That is most finance groups.
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Using the finance plugin
If you may have the finance plugin put in, run:
/variance-analysis opex 2026-02 vs funds
What the analyst really critiques
Where purpose-built instruments have an edge
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Where to Start
Pick one workflow. Not all.
Cheers.
