Is an "agentic bank run" coming? Apollo warns: AI assistants may drain banks' cheap deposits, posing risks to the financial system.

Apollo Global Management Inc. Chief Economist Torsten Slok said that if consumers begin to rely heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) assistants such as Meta's (META.US) Muse to move cash into higher-yielding accounts, it could pose risks to the financial system. In a report published last Sunday titled "Is an Agentic Bank Run Coming?", Slok said: "If every household uses AI agents to optimize the return on its cash balances, banks could lose the large pool of cheap deposits they rely on to make loans, which would pose a problem for the entire financial system." Slok said AI assistants will soon be able to automatically move funds out of checking accounts (where the national average rate is just 0.1%) and into accounts yielding 3.3%-5.0%. He also mentioned several fintech companies that offer higher deposit rates than banks, including SoFi Technologies Inc. (SOFI.US), with a deposit rate of 4.5%, and LendingClub (now renamed Happen Inc., HAPN.US). Earlier this month, Meta's stock surged after the release of Muse, and the app quickly topped the app charts. In recent years, traditional banks have been facing competitive pressure from internet banks such as Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.'s (GS.US) Marcus and Ally Financial Inc. (ALLY.US), which are able to offer some of the highest rates in the industry without being weighed down by the fixed costs of branches. Bank of America Corp analyst Ebrahim Poonawala said in a report last week that Muse's rapid adoption has reignited "the risk that AI agents break the customer inertia that supports low-cost deposits." "A chat Siasun Robot&Automation can only tell customers that their yields are too low, while an AI agent can identify idle liquidity, compare yields and execute directly." Amid concerns over these risks, shares of large banks came under pressure last week, with JPMorgan (JPM.US) and Wells Fargo & Company (WFC.US) both falling about 3% on Tuesday.