{"slug": "a-major-german-bank-just-let-claude-and-chatgpt-trade-for-customers-in-one-test", "title": "A major German bank just let Claude and ChatGPT trade for customers. In one test, Claude beat human traders 76% of the time—but there’s a catch", "summary": "Scalable Capital, a Munich-based digital investment platform with more than €60 billion in client assets and over 1 million customers, has become the first bank in Europe to open its platform to major AI assistants including ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, allowing customers to analyze portfolios, set up savings plans and place trades through prompts. In a June research report from Elm Wealth, Claude beat human traders in 76% of sessions and ChatGPT in 63%, but the models struggled with risk management, taking too much risk relative to the trade context.", "body_md": "Watch out, investors—the AI boom is making its way to you. Scalable Capital is [opening](https://de.scalable.capital/en/newsroom/scalable-agentic-investing) its investment platform to AI assistants including ChatGPT, Claude and Grok—giving European investors the ability to analyze portfolios, set up savings plans and place trades through prompts.\n\nThe Munich-based bank told *Reuters* that it is the first bank in Europe to open its platform to major AI assistants. Its new “Agentic Investing” service [allows](https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/german-broker-scalable-opens-investment-platform-major-ai-chatbots-2026-08-25/) customers to connect their Scalable accounts to supported AI agents through the Model Context Protocol, or MCP. The move puts AI directly into the trading workflow.\n\nScalable Capital Chief Product Officer Alexander Siepp told *Fortune* the company sees the integration as a way for investors to begin their financial “client journey” inside an AI assistant and complete it through Scalable’s regulated banking infrastructure.\n\n“It certainly creates a level-playing field,” he said. “Access to information and to compute and to intelligence is now available—really—literally in your pocket, 24/7.”\n\nBut Siepp noted it may take time to become fully integrated with Scalable’s client base.\n\n“Maybe not for all client segments at the same speed,” Siepp said. “But we clearly see potential that there is a large group of clients that would be interested in doing it.”\n\nScalable Capital, founded in 2014, has grown into one of Europe’s largest digital investment platforms. The company also [told](https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/german-broker-scalable-opens-investment-platform-major-ai-chatbots-2026-08-25/) *Reuters* it has more than €60 billion in client assets and more than 1 million customers, primarily in Germany and Austria, with operations also expanding across countries including Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands.\n\nThe company’s roots are in making investing more accessible through digital brokerage and wealth-management services. Scalable has also [expanded](https://de.scalable.capital/en/newsroom/scalable-derivatives) its trading offering to include derivatives, and said in July that it would offer more than 1.8 million derivatives from seven major issuers.\n\nSiepp said that the program can fundamentally change how investors interact with their brokerage accounts. A customer could, for example, ask an AI assistant to identify stocks that have fallen for consecutive months and monitor them. The assistant could then prepare an order based on the user’s instructions.\n\n“It’s just a few prompts,” he said.\n\n## Is AI a reliable investor?\n\nBut the effectiveness of AI when given the reins for making trades remains to be seen. A June [research report](https://elmwealth.com/ai-trading/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-17234) from Elm Wealth offers a mixed answer. Researchers Jerry Bell, Victor Haghani and James White tested Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok in a “Crystal Ball Challenge,” giving the models historical *Wall Street Journal* front pages with market-moving information but withholding the actual market outcomes.\n\nThe experiment found that Claude and ChatGPT were relatively strong at predicting market direction. Across roughly 200 sessions, Claude beat human players in 76% of sessions, while ChatGPT beat them in 63%. Gemini did so in 43% of sessions and Grok in 51%. But the models had a major weakness, the study found.\n\nElm found the AI systems generally took too much risk relative to the trade context. The researchers distinguished between two investment decisions—what to invest in and how much to invest. AI performed relatively well on the first factor but poorly on the second. The study found the models understood concepts such as the Kelly criterion and Merton share in theory but struggled to apply appropriate risk management when making actual simulated trading decisions.\n\n“The US stock market has moved by over 5% on 23 days and by over 9% on seven days since the year 2000,” the study read. “Given average position sizing in stocks of 7x to 12x across the AIs, we think they were taking too much risk of a catastrophic loss of capital, given none of them had (or could reasonably expect to have) super high hit ratios.”\n\nOpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from *Fortune* about using AI assistants for financial trading.\n\nBut Scalable is not handing over unrestricted control of customer accounts to AI. The company said users must approve trades and savings plans before they are executed, and its current system does not allow AI assistants to make payments or withdraw money from Scalable accounts. Siepp said the AI connection follows the same core security protocols as Scalable’s existing applications, including strong customer authentication.\n\n“Whether you end up finding the holy grail together with your AI assistant on high returns and low risks or not, I think that remains to be seen,” he said.\n\nHe also stressed that the arrangement is not a formal partnership between the German bank and OpenAI or Anthropic. Instead, Scalable is using MCP—an open technology for connecting AI systems to external tools and services.\n\n“We are using available resources, technologies, the MCP—the Model Context Protocol,” Siepp said. “This is really a standalone offering that comes only from Scalable users, ready-made technology integrations offered by those AI assistants.”\n\n*breaks the traditional barrier between audience and newsroom. The show transforms*\n\n**Fortune Daily*** Fortune*’s trusted reporting into actionable, conversational, and entertaining insights for an emerging class of business leaders.\n\n**Watch here.**", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-major-german-bank-just-let-claude-and-chatgpt-trade-for-customers-in-one-test", "canonical_source": "https://fortune.com/2026/08/26/scalable-capital-claude-chatgpt-traders-bank-invest/", "published_at": "2026-08-26 16:46:29+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-26 17:16:56.432147+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Scalable Capital", "ChatGPT", "Claude", "Grok", "Elm Wealth", "Alexander Siepp", "Reuters", "Fortune"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-major-german-bank-just-let-claude-and-chatgpt-trade-for-customers-in-one-test", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-major-german-bank-just-let-claude-and-chatgpt-trade-for-customers-in-one-test.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-major-german-bank-just-let-claude-and-chatgpt-trade-for-customers-in-one-test.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-major-german-bank-just-let-claude-and-chatgpt-trade-for-customers-in-one-test.jsonld"}}