AI agents could drain cheap bank deposits, Apollo's Torsten Slok warns

Slok said Meta’s personal agent Muse and similar agentic AI assistants could soon sweep household cash into high-interest accounts automatically, instead of the 0.1% national average on checking accounts.

Torsten Slok is one of the widely read and influential investment economists on Wall Street. He is also a partner at private-equity giant Apollo Global, which manages about $1 trillion in assets.

Slok highlighted that firms such as Revolut, SoFi, Varo, LendingClub and Wealthfront paying between 3.3% and 5% annual interest on deposits. That amounts to about $100 in annual interest on a $10,000 balance, versus just $10 from checking accounts.

He therefore argues that if households widely use agentic AI to make investments, it could put banks – which depend on cheap deposits to create credit – at risk, posing a threat to the broader financial system.