Barclays scales Claude to upgrade operations and improve client experience

Barclays, the British universal bank, is extending Claude across the organization to accelerate software development, modernize legacy systems, and improve operational efficiency. As part of the rollout, the bank expects Claude Code adoption to reach 50% of its developer population by the end of 2026, rising to a majority of software engineers in 2027.

The bank frames the expansion as a governance challenge as much as a technology one, noting that integrating AI across a large, complex, and highly regulated organization requires both capable technology and disciplined governance. Group Co-Chief Operating Officer Anne Marie Darling said the measure of the technology is its impact on customers, clients, and colleagues, and that expanding Claude is about transforming how work gets done — reimagining processes and building a simpler, more efficient organization within a secure, well-governed environment, freeing colleagues to focus on more complex problems and accelerate innovation. Fellow Group Co-COO Craig Bright added that software engineering and cyber security are both being reshaped by increasingly capable AI systems, and that Barclays is moving toward AI as an increasingly agentic capability embedded in how it builds, tests, secures, and operates technology — using Claude to modernize legacy platforms, improve software quality, and let technical experts concentrate on the hardest challenges.

One part of the partnership is already in production: the Colleague Knowledge Assistant, which helps Barclays UK employees find information and answers faster when supporting the bank's more than 20 million UK retail customers. Live since 2025 and powered by Claude through a retrieval-augmented generation architecture, the assistant has been adopted by more than 16,000 colleagues and has handled over one million searches, producing faster access to information and quicker customer support. The excerpt also references work to enhance operational efficiency in Barclays' Global Markets business, though that section is cut off in the source text.