Guest bio
- The world's most cited financial futurist, and author of Branch Tomorrow and Bank 5.0: The Rise of the Agentic Bank.
- Founded Moven, the first mobile app-based bank in the US, and has built fintech businesses with more than 3 million users.
- Has advised the White House, the European Union and Gulf governments, and has been inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame.
Brett King is the world's most cited financial futurist and the author of bestselling books including Branch Tomorrow and, most recently, Bank 5.0: The Rise of the Agentic Bank. A coder, consultant and entrepreneur, he founded Moven, the first mobile app-based bank in the US, and has built fintech businesses with more than 3 million users. He has advised the White House, the European Union and Gulf governments on financial innovation and digital transformation, and has been inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame. He gives more than 100 keynotes a year, hosts the shows Breaking Banks and The Futurists, followed in over 180 countries, and organised the first Dubai Futurists X Summit.
Show notes
What happens when your bank’s next customer is not a person, but an AI agent acting on their behalf? For Brett King, this is not a distant thought experiment. It is the next chapter of banking, and the institutions that mistake it for another technology upgrade may already be falling behind.
Returning to Money Majlis for a third season, the futurist and bestselling author explores his new book, Bank 5.0: The Rise of the Agentic Bank, in his first long-form podcast conversation about its ideas. After imagining banking in 2050 and debating the disappearance of branches in previous seasons, Brett and Suvo now confront something fundamental: a financial system designed for machines rather than humans.
Brett traces a progression from conversational banking apps to personal agents that compare options, negotiate terms and execute transactions without customers opening a banking interface. The competitive question changes accordingly. It is no longer simply who owns the best app, but whose infrastructure an agent chooses when pursuing the best outcome for its owner. Even successful neobanks, he argues, face another wave of disruption from AI-native challengers.
Suvo brings a banker’s scepticism to the futurist’s conviction. Can impressive AI benchmarks translate into sound credit judgement? Could millions of agents seeking safety trigger a bank run faster than any human could contain? And why should Gulf banks enjoying strong financial performance risk changing a model that still works?
The discussion moves from strategy to the mechanics of money that moves itself. Know Your Agent raises difficult questions about identity, authorisation and liability. Brett proposes transaction rollbacks rather than conventional chargebacks, while acknowledging that today’s legal frameworks do not yet settle responsibility. Loyalty programmes face pressure from agents that redeem rewards efficiently and choose purchases without emotional attachment. Stablecoins, programmable money and agent-owned accounts challenge familiar assumptions about deposits and payments.
The human consequences are unsettling. Brett and Suvo debate private bankers, disappearing entry-level roles, AI-assisted boards and regulation that becomes technological infrastructure. Beyond efficiency lies a harder question: if AI creates wealth while displacing human work, who shares in the gains?
Candid, provocative and punctuated by the warmth of a longstanding friendship, this conversation asks banking leaders to look beyond today’s profits towards tomorrow’s relevance. It closes with a rapid-fire round and Brett’s stark vision of banking in 2050: autonomous. For anyone leading, governing or building financial services, the challenge is not abstract.
For more details on Brett King’s latest book, Bank 5.0, visit bank5book.com.
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