Dimon says JPMorgan will not let outside AI agents into customer accounts, as banking asks who gives them a mandate

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, has said the bank is not going to let third-party AI agents operate inside its systems on customers’ behalf, warning of the risk of “rogue agents”. The remarks, made on the bank’s third-quarter earnings call, have drawn comment from a fintech executive who says the answer lies in clear, limited mandates rather than a blanket refusal.

What Dimon said

Dimon spoke on the call on Tuesday 13 October 2026, the date of the bank’s third-quarter results, according to Banking Dive’s report published by Customer Experience Dive on 14 October. The publication said he warned that customers who hand access to AI agents are making their own decision and should understand what follows from it.

“You don’t want rogue agents, and there could be thousands of them,” Dimon said, as quoted by Customer Experience Dive. The same report quoted him as saying: “If people are using them, they should understand the risk.”

Fortune reported that Dimon also said: “We’re not going to allow just any outside agent to come inside the company.” According to Fortune he added: “We have to make sure we protect our customer in the right kind of way” and “So we’re building tools to do that, too.”

The comments were a response to a question from an analyst. According to the transcript of the call published by The Motley Fool, Bank of America analyst Ebrahim Poonawala asked about the risk agentic AI poses to banks and about deploying such tools given “all the rogue agents”. The transcript also records Dimon saying JPMorgan uses agents internally and is “not against agents or for agents”.

The bank’s position

Fortune said a JPMorgan spokesperson told it that “Protecting our customers is our top priority” and that “We support secure, customer-authorized data sharing through open banking providers.” That points to a distinction between agents that log in with a customer’s banking credentials and data sharing that a customer has authorised through a regulated provider.

American Banker reported on 13 October that JPMorgan’s chief financial officer, Jeremy Barnum, also raised the issue of customers giving up their credentials to an agent.

The International Business Times reported on 16 October that Dimon had made related remarks in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago. It quoted him as saying: “If they can make payments for you, that means you have to give them your bank code.” It also quoted him as saying: “That means they are in your bank and you’re assuming they’re going to act properly on your behalf, and they may not.”

Customer Experience Dive said the comments came weeks after Meta launched its Muse AI assistant, which it said had revived concerns that AI tools could pull deposits away from banks. It also said Dimon argued that regulators should prepare for possible harm from agents.

An industry view: build the mandate in

Theo Wasserberg, Managing Director, UK and Ireland at Embat, said in a comment supplied to journalists that caution from large banks should not be read as hostility to the technology.

“Caution from the industry’s largest institutions shouldn’t be read as resistance to AI agents. It is the necessary first chapter of their adoption. We saw the same pattern with embedded finance. Initially, access started narrow and tightly permissioned, and trust was earned step by step. Within a few years, it became infrastructure nobody thinks twice about.”

Wasserberg pointed to the way businesses already let others act on their accounts.

“Corporate banking already offers a blueprint. Businesses have long allowed others to act on their accounts through mandates, with defined limits, dual approvals and a clear audit trail of who authorised what. AI agents need exactly that. They should not hold open-ended credentials. They should hold a digital mandate that sets what an agent can see, what it can do, and when a human must sign off.”

On responsibility, he said:

“That also brings clarity to the question of responsibility, because accountability follows the mandate. The institutions that design these mandates proactively will be the ones customers trust to put their agents to work.”

What it means for customers and businesses

The practical question raised by the exchange is who is responsible when an agent acts on an account. Dimon’s position, as reported, is that the bank will not let just any outside agent into its systems and that customers who choose to use them should understand the risk. Wasserberg’s argument is that the answer is a narrower form of access, with limits and sign-off set out in advance, rather than a choice between full credentials and none.

JPMorgan has not said how or when it might allow agents to act directly on accounts. Fortune quoted Dimon as saying the bank is building tools to protect customers, but no timetable has been given.