The emergence of powerful AI financial agents might spell an end to the days of big banks getting funding practically for free.
AI agents could move household cash from low-yield checking accounts into products paying 3.3% to 5.0%, weakening a major source of bank funding, Apollo Global Management Chief Economist Torsten Slok warned in a report Sunday. The national checking-account average is about 0.1%, he wrote.
If millions of agents receive similar instructions, routine rate shopping could become a synchronized movement of money. The scenario remains a forecast, and Apollo does not estimate how many consumers would delegate control or how much money might move.
The DeAI angle: The use of AI to optimize financial returns, and possibly to reroute traditional deposits to higher-yielding products on crypto rails, could introduce fresh systemic risks into the global financial system. Such pressures in turn could accelerate adoption of decentralized financial markets.
Many banking customers don't bother moving their deposits around to higher-yielding options because it's too little gain for the effort. There's also the safety factor: Many of the deposits are covered by FDIC insurance, and the biggest banks are presumed to be backstopped by the Federal Reserve.
Apollo does not mention cryptocurrency. But crypto proponents have touted stablecoins and decentralized-finance markets for their round-the-clock settlement and machine-friendly interfaces, which agents could use to move money or seek yield.
HOW AI WAS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THIS PIECE: The first draft was generated on ChatGPT using a custom skill designed to write stories based on reports. I then used the Distro Publisher MCP connector to file the draft directly to DeAI News on the DistroVerse web app. I then edited the piece using the built-in DistroVerse story editor.