The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has shared that it will work with top-tier AI firm Anthropic on its “Supercharged Sandbox,” an environment where firms can test AI products and models geared towards financial services. The FCA stated that all accepted entities will gain access to Claude Code and Claude Cowork.
The AI sandbox is already working with NVIDIA and NayaOne. The relationship with NVIDIA allows access to accelerated computing infrastructure and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software to support the development and testing of AI use cases.
The 21 firms accepted into the second group include: Scottish Widows; Money Advice Trust; TrueLayer; calQrisk; Merx Digital Solutions Ltd (SmartDrops); Aegis Trace; Sardine AI Corp; Zquas; Trustie Labs; Welleness; IntelXview Ltd; RMI Agentic; Ubyx, partnering with Amazon; Deepflow; FSCom; GAI Labs; Condukt; Kaption; and Relace.
The FCA highlighted several goals of the AI Sandbox:
- enable safer agent-led payments and commerce
- detect fraud and economic crime more effectively
- strengthen AI governance and accountability
- widen access to financial services for vulnerable and underserved consumers
- streamline compliance and business automation
This is the second group to enter the sandbox.
Jessica Rusu, chief data, intelligence and information officer at the FCA, said partnering with Anthropic will accelerate innovation.
The FCA has also launched a new Agentic Academy, a 10-week specialist AI program for approved firms.
AI is already widely in use in the financial services industry. It is estimated that around 75% of all UK financial services firms use AI and are growing quickly.
