Advisor Breakdown · May 2026

What Claude and Perplexity
just did to your financial advisor

By Dan Donovan, @askdandonovan

Two AI launches on the same day. Both targeting the same job. Here's what actually happened, and what to do about it.

10 Claude finance agents
35 Perplexity workflows
May 5 Both launched same day
$24k/yr What they're replacing

On May 5, 2026, Anthropic launched 10 AI agents designed to automate financial advisor workflows, built into Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook. The same day, Perplexity launched "Computer for Professional Finance" with 35 automated research workflows pulling from Morningstar and PitchBook. These are the two most-used financial data platforms in the industry.

What you'll understand after reading this
Claude's 10 agents
What each one does inside Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook
Perplexity Computer
What Morningstar + PitchBook data now any client can access for $200/mo
The fee question
What the 1% annual charge actually covers, and what AI just automated
Questions to send today
Copy-paste to your advisor, or use if you are one
Part 1 of 4

Claude's 10 finance agents: what they actually do

Anthropic built these as packaged templates. Each one comes with pre-built workflows, data connectors, and specialised sub-agents. They run inside Microsoft 365 apps you already have. Jamie Dimon showed up in person at the launch event. That's not a press release move. That's a signal.

Research & Client Coverage
1
Pitch Builder
Creates target lists, runs comparables, drafts pitchbooks: model in Excel, deck in PowerPoint, cover note staged in Outlook, all from the same data
2
Meeting Preparer
Assembles client and counterparty briefs before every meeting. Pulls entity data, prior notes, market context
3
Earnings Reviewer
Reads earnings transcripts and SEC filings, updates financial models automatically, flags material changes
4
Model Builder
Creates and maintains financial models from multiple data sources, audits formulas across linked workbooks, runs sensitivity analyses
5
Market Researcher
Tracks market developments, synthesizes research across sources, flags items relevant to each client portfolio
Finance & Operations
6
Valuation Reviewer
Checks valuations against industry standards and comparables, flags inconsistencies before they leave the building
7
General Ledger Reconciler
Reconciles accounts, calculates net asset values (work that used to take days done in minutes)
8
Month-End Closer
Runs the full close checklist, prepares journal entries and management reports
9
Statement Auditor
Reviews financial statements for consistency and audit-readiness, edits credit memos against firm templates in Word
10
KYC Screener
Assembles compliance files, reviews documents, packages escalations. Removes the most time-consuming admin work in onboarding
Access: These agents are available on Claude's paid plans. They run as plugins inside Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, so no new software to install if your firm is already on Microsoft 365.
Part 2 of 4

Perplexity's "Computer for Finance" and the Bloomberg Terminal problem

Perplexity calls this "a Bloomberg Terminal for everyone." That's not hyperbole. Here's the actual maths.

Before
Bloomberg Terminal
~$24,000/yr
Institutional data, market feeds, analyst research. Used by hedge funds, banks, financial advisors.
Now
Perplexity Computer
~$200/mo
35 automated workflows. Morningstar + PitchBook data. Public and private market research, citation-backed.

Morningstar covers public markets: fund performance, analyst ratings, equity research across 600,000+ securities. PitchBook covers private markets: VC deals, PE transactions, company financials before they go public. Together, they're the data infrastructure behind most financial advisory practices.

Perplexity has packaged 35 workflows across 10 industry segments: Real Estate, Private Equity, Public Equities, and more. Each workflow takes a research question and returns a structured output: tearsheets, memos, dashboards, with every figure cited back to its source.

The 10 segments
Public Equities
Private Equity
Real Estate
Fixed Income
Venture Capital
Wealth Management
Investment Banking
Credit & Lending
Insurance
Hedge Funds
What this means: Any client with a Perplexity Computer subscription can now pull the same data their advisor uses to build portfolio reports. The research isn't the moat anymore.
Part 3 of 4

The 1% fee: what AI just automated and what it didn't

The standard advisory fee is 1% of assets under management per year. On a $500,000 portfolio, that's $5,000 annually. Here's an honest breakdown of where that goes:

Market research and data access: pulling Morningstar ratings, monitoring portfolio positions, tracking news
Automated
Portfolio reports and client decks: quarterly performance summaries, asset allocation charts, comparison tables
Automated
Meeting prep: briefings, account summaries, agenda notes before client calls
Automated
Financial planning conversations: goals, life events, risk tolerance, scenario planning
Still human
Behavioural coaching: talking you out of selling during a downturn, preventing panic moves
Still human
Tax and estate coordination: working with your accountant and attorney, optimising across accounts
Still human

The tasks marked "Automated" aren't gone. They still need to happen. But an advisor using Claude can run them in minutes instead of hours. The question is whether they pass that efficiency back to you in the form of more time for actual conversation, or whether it just improves their margins.

The honest read: If your advisor isn't using these tools, they're spending 10+ hours a week on tasks AI now handles in minutes, and still charging the same fee. If they are using them, the question is whether you're getting that time back in more meaningful conversations.
Part 4 of 4

Questions to send your advisor: copy and paste these

These aren't gotcha questions. They're reasonable things any client should know, and any good advisor should have a real answer for.

Question 1: Tools and time
Which AI tools are you currently using in your practice? Has that changed how you split your time between research and actual client conversations?
Question 2: The data access question
Perplexity just launched direct access to Morningstar and PitchBook data for $200/month. How do you see that changing what institutional-grade research looks like going forward?
Question 3: The value question
Now that portfolio analysis and client reporting can be largely automated, what's the core value you provide that AI can't replicate? I want to make sure I understand what I'm paying for.
If you're an advisor and someone sends you these questions, that's a healthy conversation to have. A clear, honest answer is better positioning than a defensive one.

The advisors who survive, and the ones who don't

This isn't "AI replaces financial advisors." The research, the data, the reports. Those were never why people hired advisors. They hired advisors because they didn't trust themselves to make good decisions with their money.

What changes is this: the advisor who runs portfolio analysis in 10 minutes instead of 10 hours now has 9 hours and 50 minutes back. What they do with it determines everything.

✓
The advisors who win use Claude to automate reports and Perplexity to access institutional data, then invest that time in actual client relationships. They become harder to replace, not easier.
✗
The advisors who don't keep spending 10 hours a week on tasks AI handles in minutes, and keep charging 1% for it. Their clients will eventually notice.

The shift is advisor-to-advisor, not AI-to-advisor. The advisor who understands these tools replaces the one who doesn't, while spending more actual time with clients.