Apollo’s chief economist warns AI agents could sweep deposits from banks to higher-yield accounts

Apollo’s chief economist has warned that AI agents capable of managing household finances could pull cheap deposits out of the banking system, threatening the low-cost funding banks rely on to make loans. The warning arrives days after Meta launched its own AI assistant, Muse, which already connects to balances and transactions at thousands of US financial institutions.

• Apollo’s Torsten Sløk says AI agents could sweep cash from 0.1% checking accounts into accounts paying up to 5%.
• Meta’s Muse, launched September 8, links through Plaid to more than 12,000 US financial institutions and apps.
• The Clarity Act, a crypto bill touching on stablecoin yield, failed a Senate procedural vote on September 15.

• 0.1% FDIC national average yield on US checking accounts today
• 5% top fintech account yield, offered by Adelfi per Apollo’s data
• $500 yearly interest on $10,000 at 5%, versus $10 at 0.1%
• 12,000+ US financial institutions and apps Plaid links Muse to

Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo, raised the warning in a note published Sunday (September 27), arguing that AI agents built to act on a user’s behalf, not just answer questions, could reroute idle cash toward higher-yielding accounts at scale. According to reporting by BeInCrypto, Sløk’s note lists 11 fintech and online accounts paying between 3.3% and 5%, with Adelfi topping the list at 5% and SoFi close behind at 4.5%.

Sløk warns a household sweep could strip banks of cheap deposits

The gap Sløk is flagging is arithmetic before it is technological. A $10,000 balance parked at the FDIC’s national checking average of 0.1% earns roughly $10 a year, while the same balance at 5% earns about $500, a fiftyfold difference in return for identical risk to the depositor.

Banks depend on that gap. Paying savers little while lending the same deposits out at higher rates is a core source of bank profit, and cheap deposits are what fund loan books.

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.

Torsten Sløk, chief economist, Apollo

Sløk’s own caveat matters as much as his warning. The scenario he describes rests on universal adoption, “every household,” and his note does not estimate how much cash could actually move or on what timeline.

Plaid’s Muse link reaches 12,000 institutions but stops short of moving money

Meta launched Muse on September 8 as an assistant that can act on a user’s behalf rather than simply respond to queries. Plaid, the data firm that connects Muse to bank accounts, said in a blog post that users can view balances, transactions, investments and mortgage details through the agent across more than 12,000 US financial institutions and apps.

Plaid’s announcement does not describe Muse as able to move money between accounts. That leaves a gap between what the technology currently does and the sweep behavior Sløk’s warning assumes.

Demand for the product is nonetheless building. On Thursday, JPMorgan raised its price target on Meta and said Muse could become the most widely used consumer AI application since ChatGPT.

Zaccardi says he already parks cash outside 0.1% accounts

Some market participants argue the shift Sløk describes is already underway, just not through AI agents yet. Chartered financial analyst Mike Zaccardi wrote on X that he keeps his own cash in BOXX, an exchange-traded fund designed to track short-term Treasury bill returns rather than sit in a checking account.

“Is an Agentic Bank Run Coming?” Zaccardi asked, framing the risk in the same terms Sløk used: a systemic crunch if adoption becomes widespread.

Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute, argued that both AI and crypto are coming for the traditional banking model and urged politicians to facilitate the transition rather than resist it. Washington is already contesting a related question, who gets to pay savers competitive yield, through the stalled Clarity Act, which failed a Senate procedural vote on September 15.

The BlockWest read. The more immediate pressure on bank funding is not agentic AI, it is the existing menu of fintech accounts and Treasury-tracking ETFs like BOXX that already beat 0.1% checking without needing an assistant to click the button. Muse’s current limits, no money movement, make Sløk’s scenario a design question for Meta and Plaid, not a live systemic risk yet. Bank treasurers should watch Plaid’s roadmap, not Sløk’s hypothetical.

Whether the risk becomes concrete depends on a feature Plaid has not yet confirmed: whether Muse, or a future version of it, gains the ability to move funds between accounts rather than just display them.

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