The Banks of Tomorrow Will Win on Efficiency, Not Relationships
By Jessica Kendall, Contributor at The Financial Brand
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The next major transformation in banking may be driven by a surprising development: Financial institutions will increasingly serve AI agents rather than human customers.
In his new book, banking futurist and author Brett King explores how autonomous AI agents will change the way consumers access credit, manage money, and choose financial providers.
In a recent Banking Transformed podcast, King argues that banks will compete on their ability to deliver financial utility efficiently, rather than on traditional products, rewards, or customer relationships. He also sees personal AI money coaches expanding financial inclusion by making financial guidance more accessible.
Key insight: Realizing that potential will require entirely new approaches to digital identity, regulatory oversight, and financial infrastructure. This raises important questions about how institutions should prepare their technology, business models and operating structures for an increasingly autonomous financial system.
Key Takeaways
- AI agents will become the new financial intermediaries. Banks must make their products and services accessible to agents that compare providers and execute transactions on consumers’ behalf.
- Operating efficiency will define competitive advantage. Institutions with lower cost-to-income ratios and more adaptable technology foundations will have an increasingly powerful position.
- Personal AI could expand financial inclusion. Everyday money coaches could make financial guidance accessible to people who face traditional literacy, language, and education barriers.
- Banking infrastructure must evolve. Agent identity, automated supervision, and cross-border regulatory standards will be essential to supporting agentic financial services.
AI Agents Will Choose Financial Providers
Brett King’s central argument in Bank 5.0 is that AI agents will become the dominant users of banking services. While banks including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citi have already restricted agents to read-only access, King sees these limitations as an early response to a much larger transformation.
Consider a consumer looking for credit to finance a major purchase. Rather than researching individual banks, the consumer could ask a personal AI agent to find the best solution. The agent would contact multiple providers, compare costs, payment terms and penalties, then present the strongest options. Eventually, consumers may delegate the decision and execution entirely, with little interest in which institutions actually provide the credit.
That changes the competitive equation for banks. King argues that agents will prioritize financial utility over product packaging, rewards programs and traditional marketing. Banks will need to provide standardized, readily accessible information that other agents can interpret and use. Sending an agent to a website or mobile app to complete a transaction defeats the purpose.
Customer primacy will also take on a different meaning. King believes the primary financial relationship will increasingly belong to the consumer’s personal agent, which will understand an individual’s financial circumstances and goals better than any single bank.
What this means: Products and services must be designed to compete in an environment where an algorithm evaluates the available options. The institution that consistently delivers the best outcome has a better chance of earning the business.
Efficiency Becomes the Competitive Benchmark
King expects AI to accelerate the competitive advantage already enjoyed by digital-first institutions. He points to Nubank and WeBank, both of which have achieved strong cost-to-income ratios while serving broad customer segments, including lower- and middle-income consumers.
Their success illustrates how technology-driven operating efficiency can expand access to financial services. Lower costs make it economically viable to serve customers who might not meet the profitability requirements of traditional banking models. AI could extend that advantage considerably.
King expects cost-to-income ratio and capital efficiency to become increasingly important measures of competitive performance. He also questions whether the market will continue accepting the operating expense associated with maintaining traditional branch networks and legacy infrastructure.
Within 10 years, he predicts that banks will have a harder time justifying those costs when digital competitors demonstrate more efficient ways to deliver comparable services.
Personal AI Could Expand Financial Access
King sees another important consequence of agentic banking in its potential to improve financial inclusion.
A personal AI agent that also serves as a money coach could make financial guidance available through everyday conversation. People with limited financial knowledge, reading ability, or language proficiency could interact with banking services without navigating complicated forms or unfamiliar terminology.
King points to an example involving investment risk questionnaires. Traditional financial institutions often require customers to understand and complete these assessments before accessing certain products. Those requirements can become barriers for people who struggle with the language or concepts involved.
A personal AI money coach could bridge that gap. With access to a customer’s cash flow and spending behavior, it could offer guidance in the context of everyday financial decisions. King believes this ongoing support could be considerably more effective than a standalone budgeting course because it is connected to the person’s actual financial life.
There are still practical considerations, including access to smartphones and computing resources. But King argues that these capabilities won’t require expensive, cutting-edge devices.
Key takeaway: Banks should consider how personal AI can become part of their financial wellness strategies. A money coach that helps customers manage cash flow, build savings and make informed decisions could create meaningful value while extending services to people who have historically faced barriers to participation.
Regulation Must Become Technology Infrastructure
The transition to agentic banking creates a fundamental challenge for financial regulators. Today’s systems generally assume a human is responsible for authorizing and executing financial transactions. That framework becomes considerably more complicated when autonomous agents act on behalf of consumers and interact directly with financial institutions.
King argues that the industry needs formal digital identity systems to establish which agents are legitimate and whether they have authority to represent particular individuals. He also envisions an automated supervision layer capable of monitoring agent activity at scale.
Regulatory readiness varies considerably by market. King ranks Singapore and China among the most prepared jurisdictions, followed by the UK and UAE. He considers the United States and Australia considerably less prepared.
In the U.S., fragmented regulatory authority presents an additional challenge: Determining which agency would develop and maintain the technology infrastructure needed to translate banking regulations into operational code.
Cross-border regulatory harmonization will be equally important. King points to the European Union’s GDPR as an example of how one regulatory framework can influence standards internationally. He argues that AI-driven commerce and financial services will require similar coordination to operate safely across markets.
Key takeaway: King predicts substantial consolidation across financial services by the mid-2030s. Banks unable to connect to the emerging technology infrastructure could lose customers through attrition or become acquisition targets for institutions better equipped to serve an autonomous economy.
What this means: The strategic challenge is preparing a financial institution to participate in that infrastructure. Technology compatibility, operating efficiency, and the ability to adapt to emerging identity and regulatory standards will increasingly influence whether a bank can compete.
As King sees it, banking is becoming core technology infrastructure for an autonomous economy — and institutions will need to evolve accordingly.
