Bailey and Dimon press for rules on who is liable when an AI agent moves money

Andrew Bailey told the Group of Thirty that policymakers “have got to address” concerns about AI agents, warning that “people could get misled” about who holds responsibility when one acts¹. The Bank of England has flagged AI agent liability as a new risk to financial stability, with regulators still debating where responsibility sits in a fast-moving field².

Jamie Dimon raised the same question from the other side of the counter. The JPMorgan Chase chief executive cautioned that artificial intelligence agents allowed to make payments on a customer’s behalf may not act properly, and said such agents would need their bank’s involvement³. His warning covers security, customer control and liability when agents are given access to bank accounts⁴. Dimon has also said AI is outpacing governments’ ability to control its spread, while arguing that this does not remove the need for regulation⁵.

Why it matters to investors

Unsettled liability is a balance-sheet item in waiting. If a payment agent misfires, the loss falls on the bank, the agent’s developer or the customer, and no regime currently assigns it^1,2. Banks price operational risk from precedent, and here there is none, which is why Bailey’s framing is about who is misled rather than about the technology itself.

Supervisors are already moving on the adjacent question of resilience. The European Central Bank, by letter, has required euro-area banks to submit comprehensive action plans for AI-enabled cybersecurity⁶. That is a reporting requirement rather than a liability rule, but it establishes the supervisory channel through which a liability rule would arrive.

The volumes are not hypothetical. Cheq, a cybersecurity company that verifies AI shopping agents, said it recorded a surge in agentic traffic of about 100 times, as ecommerce firms confront the agents ahead of the holiday season⁷. A private market is forming around the gap: a startup insuring the risks AI agents create has raised seed funding⁶.

What to watch

Whether a supervisor puts liability in writing, and on whom, rather than leaving it to contract and litigation². Whether banks respond by restricting agent access to accounts, which is the practical reading of Dimon’s position^3,4. And whether the insurance market prices the exposure before the regulators define it, since that would set a de facto standard^6,7.