Investors have punished shares of large brokerages and banks as part of the artificial intelligence trade, worrying that fast-evolving models could encourage clients to shift their cash out of those traditional financial firms' accounts and into higher-yielding products elsewhere.

An economist has weighed in on that dynamic with a question that banks are privately grappling with and racing to address: "Is an Agentic Bank Run Coming?" So wondered Torsten Slok, chief economist of Apollo Global Management, in a note on Sunday.

"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 wrote, adding that Meta's Muse and other agents could move cash deposits around.

His comments came days after the agent's expansion weighed on financial firms, renewing fears that AI agents will thwart banks' already costly efforts to hang onto their customers' deposits. The view from Slok, whose commentary is influential on Wall Street, will likely drive further debate over these forces' impact.

Even as investors have grappled with this thesis for much of 2026, the market's response was notable. While mobile downloads of Muse climbed last week, shares of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, the largest and fourth-largest banks in the U.S., recorded their steepest daily declines in months. Some analysts viewed the drop as an overreaction but a sign of AI-driven pressures nonetheless.

Agents helping people optimize their cash holdings may increase competition, but that is "more of an acceleration of an existing trend than a new kind of risk," says Mark Narron, a senior director at Fitch Ratings. Less than one quarter of deposits at the largest banks sit in non-interest-bearing accounts for everyday uses like paying bills, he says.

"Often certainty, reliability, safety, and convenience are just as important to customers as pricing," Narron told Barron's on Monday. "Banks will continue to compete on service as much or more than pricing."

Banks have long faced competition for consumers' deposits from all manner of rivals, going head-to-head with financial-tech startups, fund managers, and tech giants all vying for their cash.

Whether a significant swath of depositors start to entrust their personal information with AI agents and authorize them to make financial decisions on their behalf, too, remains to be seen.

Banking analysts at Bank of America Securities noted last week that early reviews of Muse praise the app's utility, but users have "expressed discomfort granting the agent broad access to personal information."

Still, rivals are swirling. In his note on Sunday, Slok listed a string of financial-tech firms offering higher yields than banks' national average, including Wealthfront, Varo, and Current.

"Banks with integrated consumer banking, brokerage and wealth platforms should be better positioned to keep balances within their ecosystems," the Bank of America analysts led by Ebrahim Poonawala wrote to clients last week. "Those without may need to improve their own offerings, partner with third parties, or accept greater funding and margin pressure."