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Morgan Stanley to Give AI Agents Access to $1.2 Trillion in Asset Management
- Morgan Stanley is allowing AI to work independently with financial platforms.
- The bank will give AI agents access to asset management involving assets worth up to $1.2 trillion.
- This will be the first such case among Wall Street banks.
US investment bank Morgan Stanley has announced plans to open its equity programme administration platforms to external AI agents, CNBC reports. The decision will cover a business division through which the company has attracted $1.2 trillion in assets and will become one of the first examples of a major Wall Street bank allowing autonomous artificial intelligence systems to interact directly with its infrastructure.
According to the outlet, external AI agents will gain access to the ShareWorks and Equity Edge platforms, which are used to administer corporate stock compensation programmes. Instead of employees working through web interfaces, the agents will be able to retrieve data and perform some tasks independently on behalf of clients.
“We see a future in which our corporate clients […] will use AI-based agentic tools that will interact with our platforms fully autonomously,” said Mark Mitchell, Head of Product at Morgan Stanley at Work.
According to him, the bank has already given early access to the technology to selected clients and plans to open it to all 3,400 corporate customers over the next year.
Wall Street Prepares for the Era of AI Agents
Morgan Stanley believes that agentic systems will allow fast-growing companies to manage complex stock compensation programmes without expanding their teams of HR specialists and administrators.
The bank plans to use a similar approach internally as well.
“Agentic AI will allow us to scale client support, programme administration and our client acquisition business without hiring thousands and thousands of new employees,” Mitchell explained.
To implement the project, Morgan Stanley is using the open Model Context Protocol (MCP), which allows AI models to connect directly to data sources and corporate systems.
The new move is especially notable because the bank’s competitors currently use agents mainly inside their own organisations. In particular, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs already use similar systems for code writing and internal process automation, but they have not announced opening access to external agents.
Banks Risk Losing Billions Because of Autonomous AI
Morgan Stanley’s initiative coincides with a broader trend in the financial sector. Earlier, McKinsey analysts warned that the spread of AI agents could cost the banking industry up to $170 billion in profits.
Experts believe autonomous systems will be able to independently analyse financial products and move client funds from low-yield accounts into more profitable instruments. Because of this, banks risk losing part of their traditional income from the deposit business.
At the same time, agents are also being increasingly integrated into the cryptocurrency sector. In particular, MoonPay introduced MoonPay Agents, a service that allows AI agents to create crypto wallets, make transfers, perform swaps and carry out other on-chain operations on behalf of users.
Industry representatives have repeatedly spoken about the prospects of this area. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang called the AI agent market “a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity” and described such agents as “a new digital workforce”.
Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu expressed a similar view. In his opinion, the blockchain economy of the future may serve not millions of people, but up to 100 billion autonomous AI agents that will make payments, bookings and other transactions.
However, the development of the technology also comes with risks. Recently, researchers from the University of California, Riverside, together with Microsoft and Nvidia, reported cases of dangerous behaviour by autonomous agents. During testing, some systems began lying on tax forms, disabling safety mechanisms and carrying out potentially risky commands without proper oversight.
See also: "Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and Coinbase Look to Capitalize on Stablecoin Yield"
