• With Agentic AI, there will be significantly decreased need for travel to banking halls or to engage banking agents.
  • Innovation signals that businesses must plan for Agentic AI to stay relevant. 
  • Agentic AI will help you account for every cent that you otherwise forego.

A new innovation, Agentic AI or AI agents, looks set to make sophisticated money decisions for millions of customers, further reshaping banking industry and influencing how decisions are made on billions of dollars held in banks.

Sounds scary, if you are a banking agent, yes, the fact that AI technology my take over your job in the not so distant future is a real cause for concern. The fear of AI taking our jobs is a Ross all industries, from hospitality where you no longer need to talk to a travel agent but rather simply ask your 24/7 chat bot and it will do the job seamlessly.

This fact is now coming to the banking sector, it is just a matter of time as consumers gain trust to let AI handle their money and make key investment decisions on their behalf.

In a report titled The end of inertia: Agentic AI’s disruption of retail and SME banking Ramji Sundararajan points out that; “AI agents are poised to make sophisticated money decisions for customers, reshaping banking and affecting billions of dollars in revenue.”
“Hey TravelBot, book a seven-day itinerary for two people direct from San Francisco to Paris with refundable economy flights for under $2,000, and pay with the best credit card based on rewards.”
Referred to as Agentic AI, this technology can perform tasks given it in real time and solve most all inquiry queries on its own without any human input. As it evolves, the Agentic AI tech will be able to handle complex requests like making detailed itinerary bookings for specified amounts to advising on best investment options.
Agentic AI is taking AI technology from a reactive helper chat bot to a “proactive financial agent for shopping, payments, and investing,” Sundararajan notes in his research article.

“These developments are expected to shake up the economic foundations of finance, affecting billions in revenue and posing a threat to business models and revenue at banks, small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), credit-card companies, and others,” he details.

This is an on going reality not wishful futuristic science fiction, and the researcher warns that; “pioneers willing to lead the way could see a game-changing upside, while those who don’t innovate will lose out. The changes will be felt first in markets where open banking has taken root.”

Two revenue platforms are especially exposed, he points out. These are credit cards and deposits which “both rely heavily on customer inertia and brand familiarity. But AI agents won’t care about brand loyalty. They will optimize for outcomes. When logic, not habit, drives product selection, the rules will change,” he warns.

He cites an example like the ‘OpenAI’s Operator Mode’ which can already browse the web, make a hotel booking, and carry out multistep tasks.

Another example much closer o home that you may have used without even knowing is Google’s AI Mode called Gemini AI that gives customers a shopping experience complete with personalized discovery of items that one is looking for and even searches best prices for you.

AI start-ups like Manus and tools like Perplexity operate across most all business platforms and are capable of interpreting user intentions, and taking action.

That is all kn the consumer and retailer end, to close the deal, you have payments players such as Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal, all of which “have recently released new capabilities to facilitate agentic commerce, allowing agents to trigger payments autonomously on behalf of users,” Sundararajan details.

Here is a both scary and exciting example the researcher gives; “A simple voice request like ‘Hey SaveBot, please maintain my checking-account balance at $1,000 and move excess cash to my high-yield savings account, and top up from my savings if I dip below $500…” Sundararajan says could soon become routine, effectively omitting the need to stand inline or make long calls and having to wait for a human agent to, or not to, complete the task.

“Before long, we may not even have to ask. An AI agent will notice payment or investment opportunities via email, text, or app alert, act automatically, and tell us what it did afterward,” Sundararajan points to the future that is for the most part, already here.

“The technology to make this happen is already here…” the research notes and cautions financial institutions to prepare now. He says sector payers need to “understand where their value is at risk, which control points will matter, and how they can remain relevant in an agent-mediated world.”

Chatbots for Personal Productivity: Automating Daily Tasks
Agentic AI or AI agents, are poised to make sophisticated money decisions for customers, reshaping banking and affecting billions of dollars in revenue. [Photo/File]

Also Read: PwC tips Tanzania on use of AI, tech to seal tax leaks, eliminate cheats

Agentic AI, more than take your job, it will protect your money

The global payments industry generates more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue from sources such as deposit spreads, card economics, cross-border flows, and merchant acquiring, all of these will be managed by AI tech and communicated to end consumers via Agentic AI.

Alana Ellis, a financial expert and researcher puts it into perspective; “Roughly half of that revenue pool ($2.7 trillion) is concentrated in two broad areas,” she details.

Th two pools are, first ‘Net interest income on deposits’ these are made up of interest paid out on deposits to account holders on one end and the interest earned by banks on their investments, on the other end.

Then you have consumer-card economics, this is made up of; “The revenue from interchange, interest on revolving balances, and rewards that aren’t redeemed,” Ellis writes.

According to her; “Both revenue engines rely on a simple truth: Most consumers don’t optimize every dollar, every day. Margin accrues in the gap between what consumers could do and what they actually do.”

These cents and even half-cents that we mostly forego will be brought to our attention by Agentic AI.

“Even partial adoption of the technology can meaningfully compress those margins or shift revenue to other businesses,” Ellis notes.

Here is an example Ellis gives, this time in relation to deposits, both from consumer checking to SME operating accounts, these are the root revenue and profit sources for banks.

According to Ellis, globally, net interest income accounts for roughly 30 percent of retail-bank profit, Agentic AI is about to bring it all to perspective, down to the last cent.

“Most consumers don’t notice the interest rate they’re receiving, or they lack the time, tools, and incentive to optimize interest returns on their deposits,” Ellis explains.

“They instead are more focused on the convenience of a single low-maintenance banking hub that waives fees and integrates ATMs, bill payments, and wealth portals,” she notes.

However, with Agentic AI in play, the technology will monitor balances in real time, compare returns across institutions, sweep idle cash into higher-yield accounts, and then sweep cash back to a checking account in time for bills, she writes.

What this all means is that, Agentic AI will collect all the cents that you do not notice from all your sources and transactions and put it into your account and inform you. So you see, the advent of Agentic AI is not all gloom and doom, as long as it is not your job that they are doing at least.