Last month, Narmi was excited to power Grasshopper Bank to become the first U.S. bank to launch a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for enabling AI-driven insights.
Customers can now safely and securely connect their account to Anthropic's Claude LLM and receive detailed responses to questions like:
The launch represents a sea change in how Americans will bank; in addition to their curated digital presences, financial institutions can now begin to allow their customers and members to have in-depth, conversational banking experiences, and a new "home base" for banking insights and activity.
This month, we provide a quick breakdown of MCP technology and what it means for banking.
MCP is defined by Anthropic (who pioneered the protocol) as “[A]n open standard that enables developers to build secure, two-way connections between their data sources and AI-powered tools.”
Or, in layman’s terms: “Think of MCP like a USB-C port for AI applications. Just as USB-C provides a standardized way to connect your devices to various peripherals and accessories, MCP provides a standardized way to connect AI models to different data sources and tools.”
While MCP is still in its infancy as a standard, we see a few crucial advantages financial institutions can look to in the near future:
As it now stands, our MCP server is designed with read-only access, meaning that it has permission to “read” banking data to get answers to questions like:
But it cannot “write” to your bank account, meaning that the server cannot induce changes to your bank account with questions like, “Set a recurring payment to John on the 15th of each month.”
In its current state, we see MCP as a way for users to gain access to financial insights through AI’s power to make unique, overarching data connections, rather than a way to enable sending payments, opening accounts, etc. This is meant to ensure even more security as standards progress with these LLM connections.
For more information on data authorization and enrollment, visit our latest blog.
In addition to starting with just read-only access, Narmi’s MCP server abides by the strongest bank-grade security protocols to ensure data integrity, while allowing users to explore the power of AI-driven financial insights in a secure environment.
The primary difference is that while a chatbot lives within a user’s digital banking experience, Narmi’s MCP server integration allows these same conversations to happen on an external LLM – currently Claude, but this infrastructure sets the stage for seamless connectivity with other leading Large Language Models (LLMs) in the future.
This allows users to think about banking on the same platforms they are increasingly using to conduct many other tasks online, without having to switch user experiences and furnish additional login credentials.
Implementing an MCP server integration is a rare opportunity for FIs to be at the forefront of something new – not just in the banking industry, but in how the average person engages with the internet.
"We don't see AI as a trend – it’s innovation that can directly address the unique needs of community banks and credit unions. It's exactly the kind of innovation that helps our banking partners compete with the biggest names in finance."
— Chris Griffin, Co-President and Co-Founder, Narmi
