Is the “AI bank run” coming? Apollo warns: AI assistants may drain banks' cheap deposits, which will pose risks to the financial system

Zhitong Finance APP has learned that Torsten Slok, Chief Economist at Apollo Global Management, stated that if consumers begin to heavily rely on AI assistants such as Muse under Meta (META.US) and transfer cash to higher-yielding accounts, this could pose risks to the financial system.

In a report released last Sunday titled “Is an Agentic Bank Run Coming?”, Slok said: “If every household uses AI agents to optimize the return on their cash balances, banks may lose a large amount of cheap deposits they rely on to make loans, which would pose a problem for the entire financial system.”

Slok pointed out that AI assistants will soon be able to automatically transfer funds from checking accounts (with a national average interest rate of just 0.1%) to accounts yielding 3.3%–5.0%. He also mentioned several fintech companies offering higher deposit rates than banks, including SoFi Technologies Inc. (SOFI.US), whose deposit rate is 4.5%, and LendingClub (now renamed Happen Inc., HAPN.US).

Earlier this month, Meta's stock price soared after launching Muse, which quickly topped the app rankings. In recent years, traditional banks have continuously faced competition from internet banks such as Marcus under Goldman Sachs (GS.US) and Ally Financial Inc. (ALLY.US), which can offer the highest interest rates in the industry without the burden of branch fixed costs.

Bank of America analyst Ebrahim Poonawala noted in a report last week that the rapid adoption of Muse has reignited concerns that “AI agents break the customer inertia supporting low-cost deposits.” “Chatbots can only tell customers their returns are too low, but AI agents can identify idle liquidity, compare yields, and directly act on them.”

Amid these risk concerns, major bank stocks came under pressure and fell last week, with JPMorgan (JPM.US) and Wells Fargo (WFC.US) both falling about 3% on Tuesday.