Claude for Financial Advisors Connectors: Every System It Reads and Which Skills Use It

1. The Short Answer

Claude for Financial Advisors reads the systems an RIA already runs. Version 1.0.0 of the plugin lists eleven partner connectors and a Schwab connector marked coming soon, alongside connectors Claude already had, such as Salesforce and Microsoft 365.

Anthropic's plugin page sums up the idea: "Prep for client meetings, handle follow-up, and pull briefs together from the tools you already use." The product was built with Dynasty Financial, Schwab and Vanguard, according to InvestmentNews, and the plugin's README lists every connector with what it brings.

What matters more than the list is how the connections behave. Each one signs in with your existing account at that vendor and sees only what you can see there, every skill falls back to paste or upload when a system is missing, and nothing is written back until the advisor approves it.

This guide maps each connector to the skills that read it, taken from the plugin's own skill files (version 1.0.0), then covers the order to connect them in and the data problem that decides how good the output is.

2. How a Connector Works

A connector is an MCP server. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is the open standard Claude uses to talk to other software, and each connector is a server, usually run by the vendor, that the plugin points Claude at.

When a skill runs, Claude sends a structured query to the vendor's server and gets back only what it asked for, while the records stay on the vendor's systems (TechTimes). What comes back enters the Claude conversation and is kept under your firm's Claude retention settings.

The plugin holds no data of its own. In the README's words: "It holds no client data: when an advisor runs a skill, Claude pulls what it needs from the connected third-party systems."

Each user connects for themselves: Settings, Connectors, Connect next to the system, then sign in with that vendor's account. The connector inherits that person's permissions, so an associate who cannot see a household in Wealthbox cannot pull it into Claude either.

Schwab is the exception, switched on for the whole firm (section 6). For the wider picture on MCP, see MCP for investment firms.

3. Every Connector and the Skills That Use It

Here is every connector the plugin declares, what it brings, and which of the eight skills name it. The /onboarding skill helps connect all of them, so it is left out of the skills column.

Two rows stand out. Black Diamond and Vanguard are wired into the plugin, but none of the eight skills names them in version 1.0.0, so you use them by asking Claude directly or add them to the portfolio skills in a firm copy of the plugin, as the customization guide shows.

And the CRM rows touch almost every skill, which is why section 10 exists.

4. CRM: Wealthbox, Redtail Through Orion, and Salesforce

Every skill that touches a household starts in the CRM, because that is where Claude confirms who the client is. The skills are strict about it: if two contacts match a name, Claude shows the candidates and asks, and it never proceeds on a name match alone.

Wealthbox has its own connector for client records and meeting history. When Zocks is not connected, its notetaker's meeting summary is the source /post-meeting uses.

Redtail has no connector of its own. Its client records come through the Orion Advisor Solutions connector, which also carries Orion Connect's reporting, so the answer to whether it works with Redtail is yes, through Orion. If you run Redtail without Orion Connect, ask Orion whether your Redtail login is enough to connect.

/post-meeting writes to each CRM in its own terms: Wealthbox notes, tasks and opportunities, and Redtail notes, activities and opportunities. It will not create a new contact or edit contact fields, and it flags those for you instead.

Salesforce comes through Claude's existing connector, and the skills treat it as a CRM like the others. Firms build Salesforce very differently, so test the write-back on a sample record before advisors rely on it.

5. Portfolio, Planning, Estate and Alternatives

Portfolio data can come from Orion, Addepar or Envestnet Tamarac. If more than one is connected, the skills ask once which is the book of record, and an advisor can save the answer in Settings, General, Instructions for Claude.

• Orion. Its Orion Connect lookup tools return household identity and current value quickly. Holdings, performance, drift and fees come from an Orion report, which the skills run only after you confirm and which comes back as a link that expires after 24 hours. If Orion is your only portfolio system, /portfolio-rebalance-review will ask you to upload or paste holdings and cost basis.
• Addepar. Public and private holdings in one view, and in /alts-brief it also answers upcoming capital calls and whether past calls cleared.
• Envestnet Tamarac. Portfolio and performance reporting with reconciliation status, which /pre-meeting uses to flag stale or unreconciled data before quoting a balance built on it.
• Black Diamond. Holdings, performance, rebalancing data, out-of-tolerance clients and tax-loss harvesting opportunities, and it can create reports, tasks and rebalance sessions with advisor approval.
• BlackRock and Vanguard. BlackRock's Advisor Center connector supplies model portfolios that /portfolio-rebalance-review can map a household against, though an IPS on file still governs the target. Vanguard brings information on its model portfolios and advisor solutions.
• MoneyGuide, Wealth.com and iCapital. MoneyGuide gives /pre-meeting the household plan, quoted exactly as returned. Wealth.com gives /estate-and-tax-brief the estate plan and prior-year tax look-back to check against actual titling and beneficiaries, and iCapital gives /alts-brief the alternatives book, with IRR, TVPI and DPI passed through as the platform reports them.
• Zocks. The first source /post-meeting tries for a meeting, and a source of relationship signals for /pre-meeting.

One gap to know: /post-meeting takes meetings from Zocks, Wealthbox or a pasted transcript. It does not read Zoom recordings in version 1.0.0, even though Zoom is on the plugin's connector list.

6. Schwab and Every Other Custodian

Schwab is the custodian partner for the launch. Its press release says Schwab Advisor Services is currently the only RIA custodian in Claude for Financial Advisors, serves more than 16,000 independent RIAs, and will let them reach Schwab Advisor Center (SAC.com) from Claude through an authenticated connection.

The plugin's README (version 1.0.0) lists the Schwab connector as coming soon, for custodial account, titling and beneficiary data in the estate and rebalance reviews. Until it appears in your connector list, those skills fall back to paste or upload.

When it arrives, it comes with controls the other connectors do not describe. Financial Planning reported that:

• RIAs activate the connector at the firm level and control which users can use it.
• Account numbers, Social Security numbers and clients' dates of birth are masked.
• Schwab's agreement prohibits training models on client data.
• Advisors pay through their Anthropic licenses, not extra payments to Schwab.

Every other custodian has no connector at launch. If you custody at Fidelity, Pershing or anywhere besides Schwab, the estate and rebalance skills work from statements or exports you upload, and you do not need Schwab to use the plugin at all.

7. When Your System Has No Connector

Every skill uses whichever connectors are live and falls back to paste or upload for the rest. A missing system costs you a step, and the skill tells you which one.

In practice, the skill says where it would have pulled the data, offers to take a pasted export, an uploaded statement or a skip, and marks that section of its output as pending instead of guessing. One missing source degrades only its own section.

Held-away accounts work the same way. There is no connector for a spouse's 401(k) at another firm, so /portfolio-rebalance-review asks for those holdings when they matter for wash sales or the overall allocation.

For a system with no connector at all, the /onboarding skill suggests two routes: ask the vendor to build an MCP server, or set up a custom one. A custom connector is software touching client data, so it needs the same vendor review and access limits as any other.

Uploading works fine at small scale. For a firm with one custodian and a clean CRM, a statement upload per review may be all the integration it needs.

8. Write-Back Waits for Your Approval

Most of what connectors do is read. Where a skill writes, it stops first, and the README states the rule: "The advisor must explicitly approve any action that writes back to an external system (e.g. CRM updates, client drafts)."

Here is every write or action the skills can take:

• /post-meeting: a CRM note, tasks and opportunities, shown as one batch; only the rows you approve are written.
• /estate-and-tax-brief: optional follow-up tasks in the CRM, after approval. It never retitles an account or changes a beneficiary.
• /prospect-intake: a what-to-expect memo offered as a Gmail draft, on approval.
• Orion reports: generated only after you confirm, since that runs a job in Orion Connect.
• Black Diamond, through direct requests: reports, tasks and rebalance sessions, with approval.

No skill places or stages a trade. /portfolio-rebalance-review lays out options and drafts a rationale memo, then stops.

One caution for whoever runs operations. The README says approval before writes, and connector-reading subagents never calling write tools, are "enforced by the model following them, not by the runtime," so connect read-only where the vendor offers it and add write access once the pilot shows the approval habit holds.

9. The Order to Connect Them In

Connecting everything on day one is a common setup mistake. Connect in the order of the skills you will pilot, one system at a time:

1. The CRM (Wealthbox, Orion for Redtail, or Salesforce), read-only if the vendor offers it. Every skill confirms the household here.
2. The portfolio system (Orion, Addepar or Tamarac). With the CRM, /pre-meeting now has numbers and /portfolio-rebalance-review can run.
3. Email and calendar (Microsoft 365, or Gmail and Google Calendar), which fill in open requests, commitments and life events.
4. Meeting notes (Zocks), then CRM write access for /post-meeting once advisors have practiced approving batches.
5. Planning, estate and alternatives (MoneyGuide, Wealth.com, iCapital), for the households that use them.
6. Schwab, at the firm level, when it appears.

Run each step with two or three advisors on real households before the next. When a brief looks wrong, you will know which connection caused it.

10. The Data Hygiene Problem

A skill is only as good as the records it reads. Connectors make your data available to Claude, and they cannot make it right.

/pre-meeting shows why. Its relationship signals come from Zocks summaries and the CRM's free-text notes, never from task fields, which the skill file says RIAs use inconsistently. Thin notes make a thin brief, and no notes leave Claude nothing to find.

Three other problems show up fast:

• Duplicate households. The skills never proceed on a name match alone, so duplicates mean more which-one questions, and the skill files treat pulling the wrong client's data as a privacy incident.
• Systems that disagree. When the CRM and the portfolio platform report different facts, the skills stop and ask rather than averaging or footnoting the difference.
• Stale marks. Tamarac's reconciliation status gets flagged, and /portfolio-rebalance-review runs data checks before any drift figure, but no check can fix a price nobody updated.

So clean up before you connect: merge duplicate households, pick a book of record for each kind of data, and ask advisors to write real notes on the households you will pilot. The guide to why AI rollouts fail covers the habits side.

11. Questions to Ask Each Vendor

Anthropic's install tutorial warns that access to these connectors "may require a separate subscription or API key from the respective provider." So before you switch one on, put these questions to the vendor:

• Is the Claude connector included in what we pay, or does it need a separate subscription or API key?
• Can we connect read-only, and what can the connector write?
• Does it inherit each user's permissions, and can we limit which users connect?
• Does it work on the Team plan, or only with Claude Enterprise? Ask Anthropic too, and Schwab in particular.
• What does your side log when Claude queries it, and for how long?
• For Orion: can a Redtail-only firm connect without Orion Connect?

Write the answers into the vendor file your CCO keeps for Reg S-P, which the compliance guide covers.