Torsten Slok, Apollo’s lead economist, has raised an alarm over AI agents that might push household savings from low-cost checking accounts into more profitable investment options, a move he claims could endanger the wider financial system. His warning appears in a Sunday note entitled “Is an Agentic bank run coming?”.
Slok’s Warning
Slok, who serves as Apollo Global’s chief economist, says Meta’s personal agent Muse and similar AI assistants could soon sweep household cash into high-interest accounts automatically. Checking accounts currently earn an average of 0.1% nationally, while some fintech firms offer annual interest rates between 3.3% and 5%.
A gap opens wide when comparing what two accounts offer on the same amount of money. A high-yield account pays about $100 a year on a $10,000 balance. By contrast, a checking account pays $10. This difference gives an AI agent programmed to chase the highest possible return a clear reason to prefer one over the other.
“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,” Slok noted.
Banks Depend on Cheap Deposits
Loans depend on cheap deposits from customers to pay for them. Without those deposits, lending power shrinks, and that strain would spread across the whole system.
Slok points to specific firms offering the higher rates:
| Firm | Annual Interest Offered |
|---|---|
| Revolut | Between 3.3% and 5% |
| SoFi | Between 3.3% and 5% |
| Varo | Between 3.3% and 5% |
| LendingClub | Between 3.3% and 5% |
| Wealthfront | Between 3.3% and 5% |
The numbers work out to roughly $100 in yearly interest on a $10,000 balance, with checking accounts paying $10.
What Agentic Finance Actually Does
These agents don’t just answer questions about money — they act on it. They keep an eye on balances in real time, weigh returns across different institutions, push idle cash into accounts that pay more, and move it back before bills are due.
Today, the technology already exists. Coinbase’s x402 protocol serves as the most widely adopted agentic payment standard, allowing an AI agent to settle payments for online services using stablecoins within seconds, without needing an account, a card, or any human approval.
Reports indicate that the x402 Protocol has handled roughly 188 million to more than 205 million cumulative transactions, with about 69,000 active agents on board. The x402 Foundation has drawn in members including Cloudflare, Google, Visa, Mastercard, AWS, Circle and Stripe, and is now governed by the Linux Foundation.
The Market Is Growing
Financial services firms are increasingly turning to agentic AI, and the market is growing fast. One forecast puts the value of agentic AI in financial services at $7.78 billion in 2026, with projections reaching $43.52 billion by 2031. A separate estimate narrows the scope to AI agents alone, sizing that segment at roughly $845 million in 2025.
Crypto Is Already Building the Payment Rails
The infrastructure for payments that these agents require is already being constructed within crypto. Stablecoins are advancing into regulated finance, with APAC serving as a primary testing ground.
Who Is Torsten Slok
Slok is one of the widely read and influential investment economists on Wall Street. He is a partner at Apollo Global, which manages about $1 trillion in assets.
The Slow-Motion Bank Run Scenario
Slok describes a situation where a bank run unfolds gradually through automated choices rather than fear-driven withdrawals, producing a gradual loss of low-cost deposits. This drain removes the funding banks depend on for credit creation.
Why This Matters Now
There is no fiction about the hardware. There is no fiction about the financial motives driving it. The physical foundation is under construction.
The co-founder of the ETF Institute, Nate Geraci, has previously argued that artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency are both set to challenge the traditional banking model.
Slok’s warning is a call to watch the numbers move.
Source material: “AI agents could drain cheap bank deposits, Apollo's Torsten Slok warns,” CoinDesk.
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