Citi and BofA limit agent account access

IT Home on 17 October, citing a Financial Times report from the 16th, says Citigroup and Bank of America have limited AI agents’ access to customer accounts. The report says US banks warned regulators that an agent might move idle cash to a higher-yielding account and drain deposits. That is the loss the banks fear, not a measured outflow.

Citi’s stated reason is the security of accounts and personal information. It bars third-party AI agents or assistants from logging in, and it does not let them transact directly on Citi’s digital banking platform. Citi also says customers can still authorize some open-banking providers to read account information, in a limited range. Read-only access and the ability to move money are separate in that statement.

Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan said the bank has also limited agents’ access to consumer deposits and is writing rules for who is responsible when an AI-authorized payment goes out. His point was that money leaving an account must have a person’s authorization. The bank is talking to agent providers, because a customer might later say the money moved without their knowing why or where. A person familiar with the matter confirmed that the restrictions are in place. That person is not a public bank statement.

JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said this week that the bank does not want a potential thousands of uncontrolled agents, so it will limit their access to customer accounts. He said the bank is building tools; until then it will not let any external AI agent wander into the bank’s systems, because the risk to customers and to JPMorgan is too large.

The quantified warning comes from a report by Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. He warned that an assistant could move household cash from checking accounts that average 0.1% nationwide into accounts paying 3.3% to 5%. The article then says JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo together hold $1.6 trillion of non-interest-bearing deposits, 16% of the three banks’ liabilities. If they paid depositors 3%, the extra cost would be $47 billion a year, close to half their combined annual profit. The $47 billion is that hypothetical, not spending that has already occurred.

A person familiar with the matter said Wall Street executives have also told Federal Reserve supervisors they are worried about consumers using agents for financial transactions. The article says regulators privately welcomed the banks’ blocks, and that the law may still need to say how a consumer authorizes an agent and who is liable when a transaction goes wrong. The private welcome is reported speech, not a published rule.