Michael Abbott, Accenture’s global banking lead, has warned that organisations risk falling behind if they focus on blocking AI agents instead of creating secure ways for them to interact with customers’ accounts, according to a report by CNBC. “If customers explicitly authorize an AI agent to act on their behalf, that’s ultimately an extension of customer choice,” he said. As JPMorgan Chase, Charles Schwab and several major retailers move to keep personal AI agents out of their systems, consulting firm Accenture is warning that the strategy may backfire. The more important question, in his view, is not whether institutions can block agents but whether they can create a secure and trusted way for them to engage.
As per the Accenture Research report, around 64% of consumers are willing to use a GPT-like financial assistant via a generative AI platform or digital wallet and 71% would welcome an AI assistant integrated into their primary mobile banking app.
“If customers explicitly authorise an AI agent to act on their behalf, that’s ultimately an extension of customer choice,” Abbott said. Asked to distinguish genuine security worries from companies protecting profits, Abbott said both can be true at once. He acknowledged “very real concerns around fraud, identity verification, liability and consumer protection,” adding that banks’ responsibility to safeguard customer assets and data does not disappear because an AI agent is involved.
As per the CNBC report, Abbott mentioned that the consumers are becoming open to using AI-powered tools to manage their financial activities, and the banks should view this as an opportunity rather than a threat. He added that the more important issue for institutions is creating secure and trusted mechanisms for AI agents to engage with banking systems rather than attempting to block them outright.
At the same time, he noted, consumers have historically benefited from technologies that improve transparency and make it easier to compare options.
Because of security concerns, Accenture’s view suggests that consumer demand and technological evolution may make resistance increasingly difficult over the long term, while some companies are restricting access.
Drawing parallels with previous technology shifts, Abbott said the industry has experienced similar concerns during the rise of online banking, mobile banking and digital wallets. “We’ve seen this movie before,” Abbott said, arguing that institutions that adapt to changing customer behaviour typically emerge stronger than those that resist technological change. The winners are usually the organisations that find safe ways to participate in new digital trends rather than trying to prevent them, according to Abbott. He said banks have an opportunity to become trusted providers of data, intelligence and transaction execution for AI agents. “I see it more as an infrastructure challenge than an existential threat,” he said, noting that most digital systems were designed for human interactions, while one person might soon have multiple agents continuously monitoring rates and comparing products. The answer, he said, is not to block agents but “to build the next generation of infrastructure that can authenticate trusted agents, verify permissions, manage identity and support machine-to-machine interactions efficiently. ” That, he added, is nothing new for banks: customers once interacted with them a couple of times a month and now do so nearly daily through mobile. “AI agents are just the next evolution,” Abbott said.
Consumers ultimately gravitated towards technologies that reduced friction and saved time, he noted. Even as customer interactions increasingly move beyond bank-owned platforms and applications, Abbott believes financial institutions can remain central to the customer experience. As customers rely more on AI tools to make financial decisions, banks need to ensure they are present at critical decision-making moments, even if the customer is interacting through a third-party interface. On fears that millions of agents could overwhelm websites and customer-service systems, Abbott called it a possibility rather than a crisis. “AI agents are just the next evolution. The organizations that prepare for that reality will be better positioned than those that try to prevent it. Instead of blocking agents, organisations should focus on building infrastructure capable of authenticating trusted AI systems, verifying permissions and managing secure machine-to-machine interactions. His comments come amid a broader debate across the financial services industry over how AI agents should interact with customer accounts. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
Abbott also cautioned that AI-driven interactions could eventually operate at a scale far beyond what today’s digital systems were designed to handle.