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Dallas Fed survey: 11.4% of 70 bankers have restricted customers' AI agents

For the head of digital banking at a regional bank

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found in a survey of 70 bankers that 11.4% said their institution or service provider had taken steps to restrict existing or prospective customers' AI agent activity on online banking platforms, PYMNTS reported on Nov. 9.1

PYMNTS said banks are weighing the potential of agentic AI against concerns about authentication, authorization, fraud and the security of account information; the Dallas Fed survey as described by PYMNTS does not state why individual banks acted or did not act.1

Another 22.9% said they planned to introduce restrictions within the next six months, and 38.6% said no restrictions had been implemented and none were planned.1

A further 27.1% said they did not know whether their institution or service provider had restricted AI-agent activity.1

The Dallas Fed collected responses between Oct. 27 and Nov. 4 from bankers in its Eleventh Federal Reserve District, and the survey noted the results are a regional snapshot, not a measure of policies across the U.S. banking industry.1

In a separate PYMNTS report from October, JPMorganChase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Charles Schwab all said AI agents will not be allowed to move customer money; PYMNTS also reported in October that major U.S. banks are detecting and deleting unauthorized third-party agents acting in customer accounts.1

Why it matters

Most surveyed banks have no agent policy in place, and more than a quarter could not say whether their own institution or its provider has one. Executives may want to confirm now who owns agent-access rules, including at core and online banking vendors, and how the bank separates customer-authorized agents from unauthorized automation.

From the brief

Our take. About a third of surveyed banks have restricted customers' AI agents or will within six months. Another 27% of bankers don't know their own bank's position, which is not an answer an examiner will accept.

Action. Digital banking: Ask your online-banking provider whether it restricts customer AI agent access, then document the bank's policy on agent permissions.

What our records say

Citigroup treats AI as the instrument for completing Jane Fraser's multi-year overhaul rather than as a separate program, and it reports results on the quarterly earnings deck.1 Those results include more than 80% of colleagues using AI tools, 42 million interactions, and agentic AI in the hands of 10,000-plus engineers.1

  1. Citi: AI programme summary (part 1)

From our records

Sources

  1. ReportPYMNTS | Banks Draw Lines Around Customers’ AI Agents PYMNTS