Snowflake Cortex AI for Financial Services Launched
Source: snowflake.com
Snowflake's Cortex AI for Finance: Overview
Snowflake has introduced Cortex AI for Financial Services, along with its managed Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server. These tools enable financial institutions to consolidate their data ecosystems and securely implement AI models, apps, and agents, using their AI-ready data within Snowflake.
The MCP Server facilitates connections to third-party data from sources like FactSet, MSCI, Nasdaq eVestment®, and The Associated Press. Customers can use this server to link their data with various agent platforms and apps, including Anthropic, CrewAI, Cursor, Devin by Cognition, Salesforce’s Agentforce, UiPath, and Windsurf. This accelerates the creation of AI apps and agents that are rich in context.
Baris Gultekin, VP of AI at Snowflake, noted the financial sector's history of adopting new technologies but acknowledged the challenges related to fragmented data, strict compliance, and security needs. Snowflake aims to streamline critical business applications and provide a unified ecosystem of data and AI solutions by integrating AI with existing data and enabling secure interoperability with remote agents.
Cortex AI Capabilities
Cortex AI for Financial Services facilitates enterprise-ready agents that expedite intricate financial operations, such as market analysis, quantitative research, fraud detection, customer support, and claims management. This aims to save time, lower costs, and produce quicker insights. Snowflake’s MCP Server enhances this by promoting interoperability across the industry through secure connections to Snowflake data, third-party data, and applications.
The Cortex AI for Financial Services ecosystem integrates data from financial data providers and publishers, including CB Insights, Cotality™, Deutsche Börse, MSCI, and Nasdaq eVestment® via Sharing of Semantic Views; and unstructured data publishers like CB Insights, FactSet, Investopedia, The Associated Press, and The Washington Post through Cortex Knowledge Extensions. Combining this industry-specific data with proprietary data in Snowflake allows financial firms to get more insightful and accurate AI results.
Key Product Features
The Cortex AI for Financial Services suite includes features designed to help finance professionals: Complex Machine Learning Workflows: The Snowflake Data Science Agent automates data cleaning, feature engineering, model prototyping, and validation. It streamlines models for quantitative research, fraud detection, customer 360, and underwriting workflows.
Analysis of Unstructured Data: Snowflake Cortex AISQL enables efficient processing and insights from documents, audio, and images. This can transform workflows like customer service, investment analytics, claims management, and next-best action.
Easy Access to Flexible Insights: Snowflake Intelligence offers an interface for business users to gain insights using natural language from data in Snowflake, as well as third-party data, apps, and agents. This democratizes access to data across financial institutions.
Snowflake MCP Server Expansion
The Snowflake MCP Server unifies structured and unstructured data retrieval by connecting Cortex Analyst and Cortex Search to external AI agents via a standards-based MCP interface. It simplifies application architecture and reduces the need for custom integrations. Remote agents can connect with Snowflake data and third-party data from the Snowflake Marketplace through Cortex Knowledge Extensions. It can connect with platforms, including Anthropic, Augment Code, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Azure AI Foundry, CrewAI, Cursor, Devin by Cognition, Glean, Kumo, Mistral AI, Salesforce’s Agentforce, UiPath, Windsurf, Workday, and WRITER.