German broker Scalable opens investment platform to major AI chatbots ChatGPT and Claude, becoming Europe’s first bank to allow AI-powered trading
Scalable Capital, the Munich based digital broker, said on Tuesday that its account holders can now connect major AI chatbots including ChatGPT and Claude directly to their investment accounts to place trades and analyze their portfolios. The German company is calling it a first for a European bank, and the move marks one of the clearest signs yet that mainstream financial platforms are ready to hand meaningful account access over to general purpose AI assistants rather than keeping AI features locked inside their own apps.
The new capability works through what Scalable describes as agentic investing, built on a technical standard known as MCP, or model context protocol, along with a command line interface. Customers who want to use it first activate MCP access from their account security settings, then connect the Scalable MCP server address into whichever AI assistant they use. Once linked, that assistant can pull in live portfolio data, analyze holdings, set price alerts, edit a watchlist, and, with the user’s approval, execute trades or manage positions. Scalable is explicit that the connection works with ChatGPT, Claude, or in principle any other AI agent capable of speaking the same protocol, rather than tying the feature to a single AI provider.
Erik Podzuweit, Scalable’s founder and co-chief executive, told Reuters the launch is a first step rather than a finished product, with the company’s longer term plan being to build equivalent AI capability directly into its own app so customers are not required to route sensitive financial decisions through a third party chatbot at all. He acknowledged that plenty of people will be uneasy handing portfolio management over to a tool like ChatGPT in its current form, calling that hesitation understandable given how new the concept still is. Podzuweit also offered a more provocative claim, saying his working hypothesis is that using AI assistants will on average improve investment returns for customers, while being careful to note that this has not actually been proven yet and remains something the company wants to observe as usage grows.
The rollout builds on work Scalable had already been doing internally. Back in August 2025, the company introduced a feature called Insights, an OpenAI powered chat tool embedded directly in its own broker interface that let customers ask plain language questions about markets, macroeconomic events, or their own portfolios without leaving the platform. That feature was framed at the time as making Scalable the first European broker to embed generative AI for real time investment queries. The new ChatGPT and Claude integration effectively extends that same ambition outward, letting customers bring their preferred AI assistant to the data rather than confining the experience to Scalable’s own chat window.
Security is an obvious concern whenever a financial platform opens account access to an external AI system, and Scalable has built in several safeguards around the feature. The company states plainly that its MCP and CLI tools are only interfaces connecting to external AI applications, and that those third party tools operate independently and outside Scalable’s control, meaning any AI generated output or trade instruction originates from the chatbot itself rather than representing investment advice or a recommendation from Scalable. Trade execution through the integration still requires explicit user approval rather than allowing an AI agent to act autonomously on someone’s account, a distinction that matters both for user trust and for regulatory comfort in a market where retail investment products face close scrutiny.
Scalable’s own scale gives the announcement more weight than it might carry from a smaller fintech. Founded in 2014 by Erik Podzuweit, Florian Prucker, Adam French and Stefan Mittnik, the company has grown into one of the largest digital brokers in continental Europe, with more than 1 million clients and in excess of 60 billion euros in assets on its platform as of this year. While its core user base sits in Germany and Austria, Scalable also operates in Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands, and it runs the European Investor Exchange, a stock exchange built specifically for retail investors. That footprint places Scalable squarely among the wave of newer financial firms that have pushed traditional German banks to compete harder on price and digital experience, and this latest move suggests the company sees AI integration as the next front in that competition rather than a novelty feature.
The broader significance of Scalable’s decision goes beyond one company’s product roadmap. Financial services have generally been cautious about letting general purpose AI chatbots touch real account data, given the combination of regulatory obligations, fraud risk, and the reputational damage that could follow if an AI assistant misreads a portfolio or executes an unintended trade. By opening a sanctioned, security gated pathway for tools like ChatGPT and Claude to interact with live brokerage accounts, Scalable is effectively testing whether retail investors are ready to trust AI agents with financial decisions before the underlying technology has fully proven itself. Podzuweit’s own hedging on whether AI usage will actually improve returns is a fairly candid admission that this is still an experiment, even as the company markets it as a landmark European first.
Whether other European brokers follow Scalable’s lead will likely depend on how customers respond over the coming months, and on whether early usage produces the kind of measurable outcomes Podzuweit says he expects but cannot yet confirm. For now, the move puts Scalable ahead of most traditional banks and even many fintech rivals in wiring general purpose AI directly into real money management, a step that fits a wider pattern of AI integration in fintech platforms accelerating faster than regulators or, in some cases, users themselves are fully prepared for. Readers interested in trying the feature or reviewing its security details can find setup instructions on the Scalable Capital website, while more on the underlying protocol enabling these AI agent connections is available through the Model Context Protocol documentation.
