JPMorgan is blocking outside AI agents from accessing customer accounts

JPMorgan $JPM Chase is blocking external artificial intelligence agents from operating on behalf of retail customers, CEO Jamie Dimon said Tuesday on the bank's third-quarter earnings call.

"We're not going to allow just any … outside agent to come in inside the company, because it's just too risky for clients and for JPMorgan," Dimon said, according to CNBC. "You don't want rogue agents, and it could be thousands of them."

A JPMorgan spokeswoman confirmed the policy to CNBC, stating that the bank prohibits outside parties from gaining account access by collecting customers' login credentials and using them to sign in. The bank said it supports data sharing through open banking providers and is committed to enabling what it called "agentic connections" in a secure manner, with no timeline given for when outside agents might be allowed to interact directly with customer accounts.

Under the current restrictions, AI agents can pull limited account information — such as balances — through intermediaries like Plaid on a view-only basis, but are barred from taking actions like transferring funds or settling bills, according to CNBC.

Dimon also addressed the question of customer responsibility. "If people are using them, they should understand the risk," he said, according to CNBC. "They should understand there's a liability transfer."

The bank is not abandoning AI more broadly. Dimon said JPMorgan uses AI agents internally and plans to deploy them for customer-facing applications. Also on Tuesday, CFO Jeremy Barnum announced that the bank has launched a limited pilot of a proprietary product called Smart Cash, designed to forecast a user's cash flow and shift funds toward higher-yield options.

JPMorgan's position echoes a dispute the bank had with fintech firms over data access, when it moved to charge data middlemen including Plaid for access to customer information, according to CNBC. The current standoff similarly pits the bank's stated security concerns against external technology firms seeking broader account access.

The policy comes as personal AI agents have gained broader adoption. According to CNBC, Meta $META's autonomous assistant debuted in September and quickly climbed to the top of app store rankings, with OpenAI subsequently releasing its own agent. Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok and others have pointed to risks that agents could pose to low-yielding bank deposits by moving funds on customers' behalf — a risk that would be curtailed if agents cannot freely operate within accounts.

JPMorgan reported third-quarter results Tuesday with net income of $15.3 billion, up 6% from a year earlier. The bank missed analyst estimates for both earnings per share and revenue in the quarter, according to Forbes, coming in at $5.57 per share against an expected $5.90.

Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chief Analytics Officer Derek Waldron described plans to deploy long-running autonomous AI agents internally in 2026, capable of operating without human intervention for hours at a time across complex workflows. Waldron said the bank's nearly $20 billion annual technology budget has supported AI tools in areas such as private banking, where the systems analyze market data and client holdings overnight.