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FDIC's Hill says agentic AI deposit impact is an open question

For the chief financial officer of a regional bank

FDIC Chair Travis Hill said on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at an Axios event in Las Vegas that AI agents moving deposits for customers is "the big thing that we're thinking about," and that the agency is considering future guidance on agentic AI.1

Banking Dive reported that Meta's launch of its AI assistant Muse, and the addition of Stripe's Link wallet so Muse can transact for consumers, renewed concern among lenders about agents sorting cash and threatening deposit businesses.1 Hill said the key question is how many depositors will delegate that decision-making authority to agents, and what impact that will have; he said "there certainly will be some."1

Hill said "oftentimes, it's that depositors value other things," according to Banking Dive, which noted separately that many bank customers earn close to zero interest.1

About half of deposits in the system are corporate, Hill said, and a manufacturing company might have sophisticated needs from a bank that justify a small return on its deposit account.1

Asked why revised model risk management guidance from the FDIC, the OCC and the Federal Reserve earlier this year did not address generative and agentic AI, Hill said the guidance, in its prior and current form, does not "work well for agentic AI and generative AI."1

Citi and Bank of America have joined JPMorgan Chase in blocking customers' external AI agents from accessing customer bank accounts, Banking Dive reported; JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said "there's a liability transfer."1

Why it matters

Hill's remarks suggest regulators have no agentic AI supervisory framework yet and may seek public input before writing one, so banks have to make their own calls on agent access, liability and deposit-runoff assumptions for now. His point that corporate deposits, about half of the system, are held for services as well as yield bears on which balances are most exposed.

What’s next

Hill said the FDIC is "considering soliciting information from the public" on how to approach agentic AI from a supervisory standpoint, and Banking Dive reported that Financial Technology Association CEO Penny Lee referred to Hill's plans to meet West Coast companies in coming days; neither item came with a firm date.1

From the brief

Our take. The FDIC chair calls agents moving deposits 'the big thing' he is weighing, and three of the largest banks already block those agents. Your runoff model should price a depositor who never sleeps before an examiner asks.

Action. Treasury and ALM: Add an agent-driven rate-sweep scenario to deposit runoff and liquidity stress tests, separating zero-rate retail from operational corporate balances.

What our records say

JPMorgan's stated AI posture is "Build the platform, rent the models, deploy to everyone — then redeploy the people."1 Its flagship platform is LLM Suite, and it reports almost 1,000 AI use cases.1 Its stated end state, per chief analytics officer Derek Waldron, is a bank in which every employee has a personal AI assistant, every process is run by agents and every client has an AI concierge.1

  1. JPMorgan: AI programme summary (part 1)

From our records

Sources

  1. ReportFDIC’s Hill mulls agentic AI deposit impact | Banking Dive Banking Dive
  2. Also reported byM&T says it's monitoring impact of AI agents on deposits American Banker