IG Group boosts productivity and saves operational costs with Claude for Work

IG Group, a global leader in online trading and financial services, uses Claude for Work to streamline internal processes across teams and departments. By empowering employees with Claude's capabilities, they have enhanced productivity, accelerated time-to-market, and delivered significant cost savings.

With Claude, IG Group saw:

• 100% productivity increase in certain cases
• 70 hours saved weekly for analysts with AI-assisted analytics and query handling
• Less than 3-month payback period on their AI investment
• Triple-digit improvements in speed-to-market
• Significant reduction in outsourcing costs

Meeting complex challenges in global financial services

IG Group operates in a highly regulated financial environment across multiple international markets, creating unique operational challenges. Their teams need to produce high-quality content in different languages while navigating complex regulatory requirements and responding quickly to market changes. The technical and strategic communications require precise language and nuance.

By adopting Claude for Work, IG Group aimed to empower employees with an AI solution that understood financial context, enhanced cross-team collaboration, accelerated content production, and reduced dependence on external agencies. The strategic implementation of Claude transformed their internal processes by combining human expertise with AI assistance, resulting in efficiency gains across the organization.

Choosing the right AI partner

The Data and AI transformation team at IG Group, led by Olga Pirog, focused on integrating generative AI into its core business processes. The team ran a comprehensive experimentation program to evaluate potential use cases and technology partners.

During this evaluation, IG Group tested multiple AI providers, with Claude consistently outperforming competitors. Pirog notes, "Claude could solve problems that other models could not." The team was particularly impressed with Claude's reasoning capabilities and ease of use.

What truly distinguished Claude was its sophisticated understanding of nuance and context, which proved valuable for a global financial services organization where precision in communication is essential. "Claude's natural communication style won over colleagues," explains Pirog. "It doesn't just provide information—it challenges your thinking, identifies overlooked areas, and offers valuable suggestions."

Adoption across teams

The team carefully designed the rollout strategy for implementing Claude across IG Group to maximize adoption and impact. They developed a phased implementation plan from December to April that included tiered training programs and specific adoption targets, aiming for at least 60% adoption across the organization.

Anthropic provided crucial support during IG Group's implementation. Pirog explains, "What differentiated Anthropic was their commitment to coming on the journey with us. Their teams demonstrated exceptional problem-solving abilities, even navigating difficult conversations with stakeholders or complex approval processes."

Claude's conversational design and human-like communication style significantly reduced the learning curve for non-technical employees. Pirog says, "For non-technical stakeholders who might struggle with typical AI interfaces, Claude's natural conversation style made adoption seamless. There's no complex setup or extensive training needed—once we provide access, teams intuitively understand how to interact with it and start getting value immediately."

IG Group discovered effective implementation strategies through analysis of adoption patterns. Pirog notes, "In teams where managers actively use Claude, team-wide adoption rates were significantly higher than in teams that relied solely on individual champions." This insight prompted them to focus on training and engaging managers first, accelerating adoption across departments.

Productivity gains across the organization

IG Group strategically implemented Claude across diverse functional teams, each finding unique applications to transform their workflows:

In HR, Claude helps managers align with performance management approaches by generating feedback templates and suggesting effective language for different scenarios. Pirog notes, "This seemingly simple use case has gained traction. Several executive committee members use Claude to streamline performance reviews. They find it incredibly helpful because it handles nuances well and saves time, while maintaining a high quality bar."

The marketing team uses Claude for content creation and translation, crucial for a global business. Pirog says, "We need to produce an immense amount of content in various languages, and Claude's writing and translation capabilities have enabled us to scale globally." This has accelerated their global content production pipeline.

Claude assists with coding and query generation in technical departments. Analysts use it to write SQL queries and automate routine data processing tasks, while technical teams use it for quality assurance. Development teams report Claude helps expedite QA processes "to an unprecedented speed."

Measurable business impact

Claude's implementation delivered exceptional returns across multiple business metrics. Pirog explains, "We achieved full ROI within the first three months, through productivity improvements, speed-to-market gains, and agency cost reductions. In some use cases, productivity increased by 100%, beyond my wildest expectations."

The IG Group analytics team saves about 70 hours weekly through AI-assisted workflows, allowing them to focus on higher-value analysis. Marketing teams have achieved triple-digit improvements in speed-to-market, significantly enhancing campaign agility. These efficiency gains reduced dependence on external agencies, generating substantial cost savings while maintaining quality.

Beyond operational metrics, Claude has transformed team collaboration. Employees use it as a strategic advisor, with prompts like "If you were my coach, how would you critique this?" to identify blind spots. This has proven invaluable for preparing executive communications, helping craft messages that resonate with specific stakeholders.

The team created a structured exercise that walked executives through a complete business analysis workflow to demonstrate Claude's capabilities to leaders. Pirog says, "We designed an activity that showed how Claude could assist with every step of a strategic project, from brainstorming to presentation. When executives saw how Claude transformed a days-long process into under two hours, they were completely blown away. This hands-on experience immediately expanded their vision of AI's potential across our business."

Looking ahead to an AI-powered future

IG Group's AI implementation provides a blueprint for continued innovation in financial services. Their balanced approach of advanced technology and strategic change management has positioned them as leaders in AI-powered financial operations.

Their partnership with Anthropic remains foundational to this success. Pirog notes, "Anthropic is the only generative AI company that delivered on time, all the time. For our organization driving business transformation, having a reliable partner is priceless."

As IG Group evolves their AI strategy, they're focused on empowering teams to work smarter—enhancing collaboration, innovation, and value delivery. In an industry where speed, accuracy, and insight define competitive advantage, IG Group demonstrates how AI can help financial services firms not just adapt to change, but lead it.