Most portfolio connectors in Claude answer questions. SS&C's Black Diamond connector can also start work: rebalance sessions, client reports and tasks, with the advisor's approval. That makes it one of the more useful connectors in Claude's directory, and one that needs a clear pilot plan before it goes firm-wide. This guide covers what the Black Diamond Claude connector does, how its tools appear to work and how to pilot it.
The Black Diamond Claude connector links Claude to SS&C Black Diamond through Black Diamond's Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, which SS&C announced on September 10, 2026. Per the public Claude listing, advisors and operations teams can look up clients and accounts, pull performance and holdings down to the tax lot, review fees and transactions, find rebalancing and tax-loss-harvesting opportunities, and launch rebalance sessions and client reports. Anthropic says those actions happen with the advisor's approval. Status as of September 23, 2026: listed in Claude's connector directory with six tools; SS&C hasn't published availability, pricing or authentication details.
SS&C released Black Diamond AI on September 10, 2026. Alongside in-platform features, it said Black Diamond's MCP server "lets advisors securely access their Black Diamond data and act on it from their AI enterprise platform of choice." Four days later, Anthropic named SS&C Black Diamond among the connectors in Claude for Financial Advisors. Our Claude for Financial Advisors guide covers the suite, plans and licensing. This post covers only the Black Diamond connector, based on SS&C's release, Anthropic's announcement and the public Claude listing for the Black Diamond connector, all checked September 23, 2026.
| Item | What the sources say |
|---|---|
| SS&C release (Sept 10, 2026) | Black Diamond AI includes Black Diamond Assist, Black Diamond Insights, natural-language data queries and an MCP server for outside AI platforms |
| Claude for Financial Advisors (Sept 14, 2026) | Anthropic lists SS&C Black Diamond among the suite's connectors |
| What it connects | "Portfolio, performance, holdings and rebalancing data," per Anthropic |
| Listed tools | Six, named on the public Claude listing (see the next section) |
| What it can do | Client and account lookups, holdings "down to the tax lot," private fund activity, fees and transactions, rebalancing and tax-loss-harvesting opportunities, rebalance sessions and client reports, per the listing |
| Approval model | Advisors "generate client reports, tasks and rebalance sessions with their approval," per Anthropic |
| Governance layer | "Governance runs through SS&C AI Gateway," per SS&C; Black Diamond AI is designed to interoperate with SS&C WorkHQ |
| Plugin bundle status | Not among the nine providers Anthropic names for the plugin's guided setup; listed separately among the suite's connectors |
| Authentication and permissions | Not documented by SS&C for this connector; confirm with SS&C (Anthropic's general connector rules are covered below) |
| Availability | No entitlement, beta or pricing details published; ask your SS&C representative |
One detail needs care. Anthropic says the Claude for Financial Advisors plugin works with BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Addepar, Envestnet, iCapital, Orion, Wealthbox, Wealth.com and Zocks, and advisors pick among those during guided setup. Black Diamond isn't in that list. It appears in the announcement's connector list and has its own directory listing. Anthropic's plugin repository on GitHub added a Black Diamond MCP server entry to its connector configuration on September 16, 2026, and its README now describes Black Diamond. Its "tested with" list, however, still names the same nine providers. If you plan to use Black Diamond with the plugin's skills, confirm the setup path with Anthropic and SS&C.
The Claude listing names six tools. Their descriptions aren't published, so the "appears to do" column below is Vantage Point's reading of the tool names, not an SS&C statement.
| Tool | What it appears to do |
|---|---|
blackdiamond_ask_data_warehouse | Answers plain-language data questions against Black Diamond data |
blackdiamond_search_tools | Finds which Black Diamond capabilities are available for a request |
blackdiamond_invoke_tool | Runs a capability found through search |
blackdiamond_get_user_context | Returns information about the signed-in user |
blackdiamond_get_navigation_links | Returns links to the matching screens in Black Diamond |
blackdiamond_search_help_documentation | Searches Black Diamond's help content |
The names suggest a gateway design. Instead of listing every action as its own tool, blackdiamond_search_tools seems to find a capability and blackdiamond_invoke_tool seems to run it. If that reading is right, the six names don't show every underlying action, including the rebalance and report actions the listing describes. The governance cost: you can't judge the connector's full reach from the listing alone.
This matters for Claude's own controls. Anthropic's Help Center says Team and Enterprise owners can set each connector tool to "Always allow," "Needs approval" or "Blocked." If rebalances and reports run through blackdiamond_invoke_tool, as the names suggest, that setting covers reads and actions through the same tool. Ask SS&C for the full catalog of invokable actions, which ones create or change anything, and how approval works for each.
The listing says the connector is "built for advisors and operations teams prepping for client meetings, researching billing questions, or scanning the book for opportunities." The table maps those capabilities to everyday workflows. The example requests are Vantage Point's illustrations, not SS&C or Anthropic quotes.
| Workflow | Capability, per the listing | Example request (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
| Client meeting prep | Look up clients and accounts; pull performance and holdings | "Summarize this household's performance, allocation and largest positions since the last review." |
| Billing and fee questions | Review fees and transactions | "Show the fees billed to this account last quarter and any transactions that affected the billable value." |
| Drift and tax-loss harvesting | Find rebalancing and tax-loss-harvesting opportunities; holdings down to the tax lot | "Which accounts on my book are outside tolerance, and which positions have lots trading below cost?" |
| Private fund activity | Track private fund activity | "List recent capital calls and distributions for this family's private funds." |
| Client reports on demand | Run client reports; launch rebalance sessions | "Run the quarterly report for this household so I can review it before the meeting." |
The first four rows read data; the last starts work in Black Diamond. SS&C's Steve Leivent framed it this way in Anthropic's announcement: connecting Claude with Black Diamond lets advisors "bring client and portfolio information into their workflows" while "ensuring they remain in Control."
A wrong answer can be caught in review. A launched rebalance session or a report sent to a client has already moved the work forward, so plan guardrails for actions separately.
SS&C hasn't published documentation on how the Black Diamond MCP server authenticates users or applies Black Diamond permissions. What Anthropic does document is how Claude connectors work in general. Its Help Center guide to connectors says "Claude inherits each person's permissions from the connected service." It adds that on Team and Enterprise plans, an owner enables a connector, and "each person still needs to authenticate individually before they can use it."
That's Anthropic's general rule, not an SS&C statement about Black Diamond. Confirm with SS&C whether each user connects with their own Black Diamond credentials, whether Black Diamond user permissions carry through to every invokable action, and what role SS&C AI Gateway plays. Then test it in the pilot.
One more question for due diligence: SS&C's Black Diamond AI page says its "models operate inside the SS&C infrastructure, ensuring your data never reaches external AI providers." In Vantage Point's reading, that describes Black Diamond's in-platform AI. The Claude connector exists to send Black Diamond results to Claude, so document that data flow separately.
Readiness starts with your Black Diamond setup and governance, not with prompts.
| Check | Why it matters | Typical owner |
|---|---|---|
| Review Black Diamond user permissions for least privilege | If permissions carry through, over-broad access in Black Diamond becomes over-broad access in Claude | Black Diamond administrator, with the CCO |
| Get SS&C's full action catalog and approval rules | The six listed tools don't show every underlying action; you need to know which ones change anything | Head of operations or technology |
| Confirm tax lots and cost basis are clean | Tax-loss-harvesting answers are only as good as lot-level data | Operations or reconciliation team |
| Confirm fee schedules and billing setup | Billing questions answered in Claude should match what clients are actually billed | Billing lead |
| Check household and group structures | Meeting prep and reports depend on accounts being grouped correctly | Operations or data team |
| Check model assignments and tolerance bands | "Out of tolerance" only means something if models and bands are current | Portfolio management or trading lead |
| Plan recordkeeping with Claude Enterprise audit logs | Anthropic recommends Enterprise for RIAs because it includes audit logs that support recordkeeping | CCO and IT |
| Keep a connector and tool inventory with re-review triggers | Anthropic says it can't verify that connector tools won't change | CTO or head of technology |
| Ask about SS&C AI Gateway settings | SS&C says governance runs through the gateway; learn which firm-level controls, if any, it exposes | CTO, with SS&C |
The inventory check comes straight from the listing, which carries Anthropic's caution: "Only use connectors from developers you trust. Anthropic does not control which tools developers make available and cannot verify that they will work as intended or that they won't change." With a gateway design, the catalog behind blackdiamond_invoke_tool can change even when the six tool names don't, so re-review SS&C's action catalog on a schedule too. Our guide to MCP tool poisoning and rug-pull risks explains why tool changes deserve attention.
A 30-day pilot shows whether answers are correct and properly scoped, and whether actions behave as SS&C describes. Keep the group small and the criteria written.
For the approval framework, including the books-and-records questions to settle before an RIA approves an MCP connection, see our analysis of SS&C's Black Diamond MCP server. If you're connecting several MCP servers, our guide to governing MCP at scale with a gateway covers central control. This section is general information, not legal or compliance advice.
Vantage Point integrates portfolio platforms such as Black Diamond, Addepar and Orion with Salesforce and HubSpot through our system integration and data migration services. As an official Claude partner (Member, Claude Partner Network), we also help firms roll out and govern Claude through our Claude implementation services. For the Black Diamond connector, that work includes:
Senior consultants only — no junior handoffs; the experts you meet are the experts who deliver.
An action-capable connector deserves a plan before it reaches the whole firm. Vantage Point can review your Black Diamond data and permissions, design a pilot with known-answer and action tests, and set up the Claude governance your compliance team will ask for. Talk to Vantage Point about a Black Diamond connector pilot.
It connects Claude to SS&C Black Diamond so advisors and operations teams can ask questions in plain language. Per the public Claude listing, it can look up clients and accounts, pull performance and holdings down to the tax lot, track private fund activity, review fees and transactions, find rebalancing and tax-loss-harvesting opportunities, and launch rebalance sessions and client reports.
The listing says it can launch rebalance sessions and run client reports, and Anthropic says advisors generate reports, tasks and rebalance sessions with their approval. SS&C hasn't published whether a launched session can lead to trades without further review, so confirm that with SS&C before testing on live households.
Not in Anthropic's announced guided-setup list, which names BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Addepar, Envestnet, iCapital, Orion, Wealthbox, Wealth.com and Zocks. Black Diamond appears among the suite's connectors and has its own Claude directory listing. Anthropic's plugin repository added a Black Diamond connector entry on September 16, 2026, so confirm the current setup path with Anthropic and SS&C.
SS&C hasn't published Black Diamond-specific details. Anthropic's Help Center says Claude connectors inherit each person's permissions from the connected service and that each person authenticates individually. Confirm with SS&C whether users connect with their own Black Diamond credentials and whether permissions carry through, then test it with a restricted user.
In Vantage Point's reading, the tool names suggest a gateway: one tool finds Black Diamond capabilities and another runs them. If so, the six names don't show every underlying action. Ask SS&C for the full catalog of invokable actions and which ones create or change anything.
Test answers against existing Black Diamond reports, test actions on designated test households or one controlled household with sign-off, and confirm a restricted user can't see or act beyond their access. Send generated reports through compliance review, and decide go or no-go against written criteria.
Anthropic recommends Enterprise plans for registered investment advisers because Enterprise includes the audit logs that support recordkeeping. Confirm current plan and licensing details with Anthropic before you buy.
Vantage Point is a boutique CRM consulting firm helping businesses transform with Salesforce, HubSpot, and AI. Learn more at vantagepoint.io.