Weng Zhonghe's Perspective: Your Next Bank Officer Isn't Human—AI Agents Are Transforming Everyone's Financial Life

From wealth management, loans, insurance, and anti-fraud measures, AI agents are progressively becoming the financial assistant for every individual. But as they start making financial decisions on our behalf, trust and governance will also become the most critical lesson in smart finance.

Ms. Lin receives her salary on the first of every month.

In the past, she would spend half the evening handling daily life tasks: paying credit cards, settling rent, checking account balances, planning investments, verifying if her insurance coverage was sufficient, and occasionally worrying about receiving scam calls.

In a few years, all of this might be completed before she finishes her morning coffee.

Not because she has become faster—but because she now has a 24/7 financial AI agent.

Once her salary is deposited, the AI first completes fixed expenses, then adjusts investment allocations according to her preset financial goals. It immediately alerts her upon detecting unusual credit card transactions and proactively warns against suspected fraudulent transfers. When better mortgage interest rate plans emerge, it even conducts comparative analysis and waits for her final approval.

All Ms. Lin receives is one notification: "Analysis complete. Approve execution?"

She doesn’t even realize how much work the AI has done on her behalf in just a few minutes.

This isn’t science fiction—it’s the transformation currently taking place in financial services.

Previously, most people associated AI with chatting, writing articles, or generating images. However, the next wave truly transforming the financial industry won’t be chatbots, but AI agents equipped with autonomous planning, analysis, and execution capabilities.

These agents don’t merely answer questions—they understand objectives, break down tasks, invoke tools, and even collaborate with other AIs to complete a series of operations. In the future, banks, insurance companies, and securities firms may each employ AI agents with distinct responsibilities: some assessing risk, others offering financial advice, some detecting fraud, and others guarding customers’ transaction security around the clock.

For individuals, the biggest change isn’t service speed, but the shift of financial services from "passive waiting" to "active companionship."

AI agents can remind users if their insurance coverage is adequate, compare loan options across different banks, assist in retirement fund planning, and issue immediate alerts when abnormal transactions occur. In the future, people won’t need to search for information individually—instead, AI will integrate and analyze data, then provide recommendations.

But precisely because of this, a more pressing question arises:

When AI starts making financial decisions for us, whose side is it really on?

Is it recommending the best plan for the customer, or the product most profitable for the financial institution? What data does it use to make judgments? If the AI makes an error—resulting in loan rejection, investment loss, or missed protection—who bears the responsibility?

What truly matters isn’t just how intelligent the AI is, but whether it is trustworthy.

This is why, in recent years, the global financial industry has been actively promoting AI governance. Governance isn’t about restricting AI, but about establishing a traceable, explainable, and supervisable system—ensuring every AI decision has a basis, every data use complies with regulations, and every recommendation can be scrutinized.

AI can help us accomplish more, but it should never replace human judgment.

Today, it compares your mortgage options. Tomorrow, it arranges your investments. In the future, it might even plan your retirement life. As financial decisions grow increasingly reliant on AI agents, people must understand how it thinks, how it judges, and why it makes certain recommendations.

The real competition in future finance won’t be about which AI is smarter—but which AI is more trustworthy.

Technology can enhance efficiency, but trust remains the most valuable asset in finance.

*Author is an expert in digital finance and data governance