TORONTO - RBC has decided to block third-party personal AI agents from directly accessing its online banking and other authenticated digital services, the bank has told its customers, in a move reported to be a first among Canada’s big banks.
A personal AI agent is a software assistant, offered by outside technology companies, that can sign in to your accounts and carry out tasks for you, sometimes storing your passwords to do so. In a notice to customers, RBC said it has “decided to block third-party personal AI agents from direct access to authenticated RBC digital properties including online banking,” and warned that anyone who has been using an AI agent to reach their RBC accounts will find that “those connections will stop working.”
Why RBC says it is doing this
RBC says the issue is what these agents need in order to work: access to a customer’s online accounts, potentially including stored passwords. “As personal AI agents grow more autonomous, the stakes go up when something goes wrong, from fraud and consumer harm to risks that could ripple more broadly through the financial system,” the bank’s notice says. RBC says it made the decision after careful consideration, putting customer security and privacy first, and that it will keep evaluating the technology.
The bank stresses that customers keep full direct access to their accounts through RBC’s official website and mobile app, and through RBC’s own digital tools. The block applies to outside agents acting on a customer’s behalf, not to customers themselves. RBC’s notice does not name any specific AI product and does not give a specific date the block takes effect, saying only that existing agent connections will stop working.
The decision was first reported by the Globe and Mail, which obtained an internal staff memo describing third-party agents as an “unacceptable customer risk” following a security review. RBC is the first of Canada’s major banks to announce such a block.
What it means if you bank with RBC in Surrey
Surrey has one of the largest concentrations of RBC branches and customers in the Fraser Valley, and AI assistants have spread quickly through the community, including among small business owners who use them to check balances, move money or reconcile accounts, and seniors whose family members set the tools up for them. If an outside AI agent has been signing in to your RBC account, expect it to stop working, and go back to signing in yourself through the RBC app or website.
There is also a safety lesson in the bank’s reasoning that applies at every bank, not just RBC. An AI agent that holds your banking password holds the keys to your account: if the agent is compromised, or simply makes a mistake, the loss lands on you, and banks generally treat activity carried out with your credentials as activity you authorized. Never give your banking password to a third-party tool that your bank has not itself provided, and turn on two-step verification and transaction alerts in your banking app.
Source: RBC, “Understanding third-party AI agents and your RBC banking,” October 2026. The internal-memo detail is as reported by the Globe and Mail.
