Agentic AI’s disruption of retail and SME banking
AI agents are poised to make sophisticated money decisions for customers, reshaping banking and affecting billions of dollars in revenue.
Agentic AI—technology that can perform tasks and solve issues largely on its own—will be able to handle complex requests like the one above, shifting AI from reactive helper to proactive financial agent for shopping, payments, and investing.
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. 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 “engines”—credit cards and deposits—are especially exposed. 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.