AI agents could pry loose the sleepy deposits US banks depend on

Your checking account probably pays you close to nothing. For decades, banks have counted on you not caring enough to move it. Torsten Slok, Chief Economist at Apollo Global Management, thinks that arrangement may be living on borrowed time. His concern is agentic AI: software that could do the boring work of hunting down better rates on your behalf, and eventually move the money for you. The warning, and the agent that sharpened it Slok raised the alarm on September 27–28, 2026. His argument was that AI tools could automate and speed up the drift of customer deposits out of traditional low-yield accounts and into higher-paying fintech products. On September 8, 2026, Meta launched Muse, an AI agent that links to over 12,000 financial institutions through Plaid, the data network that connects apps to bank accounts. Muse can read a user’s financial data. It does not yet move money between accounts. The rate gap gives that friend plenty of material. Banks pay an average of 0.1% on checking accounts and around 0.4% on savings. Fintech platforms, by comparison, are offering between 3.3% and 5%. Why sleepy money is worth so much Banks run on a simple spread. They pay depositors a small r...