Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok has raised concerns that AI money agents could trigger significant deposit movements away from traditional US banks.
In a recent note, Slok suggested that agentic AI assistants like Muse could automatically move household bank balances into accounts offering substantially higher interest rates. Traditional checking accounts currently pay a national average of 0.1%, while various fintech and online deposit products offer rates ranging from 3.3% to 5.0%.
According to Slok's analysis, deposit products paying premium rates include Adelfi at 5.0%, SoFi at 4.5%, LendingClub LevelUp at 4.2%, Pibank at 4.1%, Revolut Metal and Current at 4.0%, Fitness Bank and Varo at 3.8%, Wealthfront at 3.6%, Revolut Standard at 3.5%, and AlumniFi at 3.3%. Savings accounts average 0.4% nationally.
Slok warned that widespread adoption of AI-driven optimization tools could have significant implications for the financial system. "If every household used AI agents to optimize the return on their cash balances, banks could lose a large share of the cheap deposits they rely on to make loans, which would be a problem for the entire financial system," he stated.
The concern centers on banks' reliance on low-interest deposits as a funding source for lending operations. Large-scale deposit outflows could constrain lending capacity across the sector.
