FIS and Anthropic have unveiled a new tool that could reshape how banks handle aml automation. The Financial Crimes AI Agent is designed to speed up reviews, while keeping investigators in control of final decisions.
Early pilots begin at BMO and Amalgamated Bank
BMO and Amalgamated Bank are among the first institutions testing the system. However, general availability is planned for the second half of 2026, giving the firms time to refine the product before a wider launch.
The initiative combines Anthropic’s Claude reasoning with FIS banking data and regulatory infrastructure. Moreover, the companies say the goal is to reduce the manual work that still dominates anti-money-laundering investigations.
Why banks need a faster workflow
Investigators often spend most of their time gathering evidence from disconnected systems before analysis can even start. That delay slows the bank investigation workflow and leaves teams with less time to focus on the highest-risk threats.
FIS said it targeted this use case first because U.S. banks spend an estimated $35-$40 billion each year on AML operations. The move also comes as regulators weigh new rules that could classify certain stablecoin issuers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act.
Those proposals would require AML programs and Suspicious Activity Report filings. That said, the broader pressure on banks is already clear as compliance teams face more alerts, more data, and more scrutiny.
How the financial crimes agent works
According to the companies, the agent will step in when a case is opened. It will automatically pull evidence from a bank’s core systems, assess the activity against known money-laundering typologies, and surface the most serious cases for human review.
However, investigators will keep final sign-off on every decision. The firms also say customer data remains within FIS-managed systems and that every agent decision is auditable.
In practice, the system aims to support faster AML reviews without removing human judgment. Moreover, FIS and Anthropic say the roadmap could extend the same approach to credit and deposit decisions, customer onboarding, and fraud detection.
For now, the pitch is straightforward: give banks a financial crimes agent that can automate repetitive tasks, improve consistency, and help compliance teams focus on the cases that matter most.