An analysis said competition among financial companies will change as AI agents spread that compare deposits, loans, investments and insurance products and execute transactions on behalf of consumers. It forecast that rather than keeping customers in their own apps, a key factor may be who organises customers' choices of financial products.

Toss Insight, a financial management research institute at Viva Republica, operator of Toss, said on Thursday it published the second report in its AI Finance research series, titled "AI: Redrawing Competition in Finance".

The report said the role of AI agents could expand from comparing deposits and loans to selecting investment products and adjusting portfolios, as well as comparing insurance coverage and managing contracts.

Financial companies currently compete by attracting customers to their apps and keeping them using them. But the analysis said this structure could be shaken if AI agents automatically compare products across multiple financial firms based on customers' income, assets, liabilities and goals, and link to transactions.

It forecast that financial firms' competitiveness will expand beyond price and customer touchpoints to include the accuracy of product information, the ability to assess customers, and the capacity to process transactions stably and recover from errors.

The report also raised the possibility that a new "gateway" could emerge if a small number of general-purpose AI agents dominate the market. It said a specific agent could determine which products to show and select, or transactions could concentrate on certain products and times as multiple agents use similar data and models.

The report proposed that, as a priority, basic rules should be established for a trustworthy agent-based financial market, including information systems for product comparisons, identity verification, delegation and revocation of authority, transaction records and error recovery. It said rules should be strengthened accordingly if a specific agent's influence grows.

Yoo Jae-won (유재원), a research fellow at the Digital Finance Research Team at Toss Insight, said, "If AI agents spread, the very way consumers went to banks, securities firms and insurers one by one to compare products could change." He added, "The key is who organises customers' choices, and it is important to establish the market's basic rules so that influence does not become excessively concentrated in a new intermediary."