JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon told analysts on the bank's October 13 earnings call that it will not let outside AI agents log into customer accounts on a client's behalf, naming Meta's Muse and the agent startup Instinct as the kind of tools now locked out of direct account access. Customers can still share data such as balances through authorised open-banking connectors, but outside agents cannot move money or pay a bill without the human logging in.

Charles Schwab chief executive Rick Wurster confirmed on October 16 that Schwab is actively blocking unauthorised agents, receiving weekly reports of tens of attempts by major AI agents to access client funds, and steering external models to read-only MCP access while its own assistant, Charley, stays informational. Citi and Bank of America have taken similar positions, with Citi building its own internal agent platform, Arc, to keep agent activity inside its risk controls.

The banks' stated concern is liability and scale: a rogue agent making the same bad call across thousands of accounts at once, and no clear answer to who pays when an assistant errs. Reporting also notes a deposit angle — agents that automatically sweep idle cash to higher-yield accounts could threaten the low-cost deposits banks rely on, with one Apollo estimate putting about $1.6 trillion of non-interest-bearing deposits in play.

Update, October 22: Axios reported that the banks have now actually detected third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts — in many cases logging in with the customer's own credentials and permission, which still violates policies requiring account holders to log in themselves. Some agents contacted bank call centres and some attempted transactions, and some appeared to act beyond the user's instructions, though the reporting does not establish fraud or losses. Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo have joined the restrictions, banks are rewriting their terms of service, Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said banks have been preparing for rogue agents for months, and Senators Bernie Sanders and Adam Schiff have raised concerns.