The UK’s financial services regulator has revealed that the second cohort of firms selected for its ‘Supercharged Sandbox’ will focus on AI-enabled use cases around agent-led payments and commerce, financial inclusion, and fraud detection, with support from Anthropic.
The Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s) Supercharged Sandbox launched last year to help firms experiment with advanced AI in a controlled environment and received applications from 132 firms.
It has reported a 51% increase in the number of applications for the second cohort, having received 199 applications.
TrueLayer, Scottish Widows and the Money Advice Trust are among the 21 organisations chosen to join the second group.
They will test solutions that are designed to 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, and streamline compliance and business automation.
The FCA also announced that Anthropic will provide access to Claude for participants in the second cohort, including Claude Code and Claude Cowork, “to help speed up their development work”.
Firms that participated in the first Supercharged Sandbox group had access to accelerated computing infrastructure and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software to support the development and testing of AI use cases, with those in the second group continuing to have access to these capabilities.
FCA’s Jessica Rusu
“The high level of interest in the Supercharged Sandbox demonstrates the demand for trusted environments where firms can experiment safely and responsibly,” said Jessica Rusu, chief data, intelligence and information officer at the FCA.
“With the support of Anthropic, participants will benefit from the technology they need to accelerate innovation. This is central to our commitment to supporting economic growth – enabling firms to make the most of technological advances while maintaining the UK’s position at the forefront of responsible AI adoption and innovation.”
The FCA’s existing digital sandbox infrastructure, which its Supercharged Sandbox is built on, is provided by NayaOne.
Karan Jain, founder and chief executive officer of NayaOne, told Open Banking Expo: “Jessica Rusu called it demand for trusted environments, and that’s exactly what the numbers show, nearly 200 applications to experiment safely with leading agentic AI use cases. It’s fantastic to see Anthropic join the journey and support this cohort.
“Every cohort teaches us the same thing: give firms a trusted place to prove an idea, and they will exceed every expectation you set. We’re proud to provide the infrastructure this work runs on, and prouder still of the FCA leading the way globally.”
Further reading: Financial Conduct Authority unveils UK’s Open Finance roadmap to 2030