In 1776, Adam Smith wrote about an invisible hand guiding economic life, turning individual self-interest into collective prosperity. Smith could hardly have imagined that, nearly two and a half centuries later, we would be creating invisible hands of our own. These are not metaphors, but intelligent agents acting on our behalf, making financial decisions and operating across services faster than we can follow.
The first glimpse of this future is already here. ChatGPT’s new Agent function is beginning to handle tasks such as booking restaurants, managing appointments and filling out forms without fuss. Unlike the chatbots of old, these agents take real action. They complete transactions and close loops. People are beginning to trust them. That quiet shift in behaviour, that moment when someone lets a machine book their dinner, is not trivial. It is the beginning of something much larger. If we trust agents to organise our time, we may soon trust them to manage our money.
Picture a wallet that no longer just stores payment details but acts on your behalf. It understands how you spend, what you value and how much risk you can stomach. It watches markets across borders, compares loan rates in real time, and spots the best moment to refinance your mortgage. If it sees a flight deal aligned with your travel preferences, it books it using points while adjusting your monthly budget. This is already happening in fragments. Revolut’s app learns your spending patterns and suggests where you might save. Plaid connects thousands of financial apps to your bank accounts, creating a web of potential automation. The pieces are assembling themselves.
Now take it a step further. Your agent sees signals of volatility in tech markets and scales back your exposure. It cancels a planned trip to San Francisco and rebooks you for Paris, where opportunity is growing. It adjusts your diary, balances your foreign currency holdings, and reroutes your spending.
The infrastructure is already emerging. Open banking allows agents to connect with financial institutions globally, though adoption varies wildly. In Europe, millions use it daily.
In America, the framework is still taking shape. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed an open banking rule in October 2024, but amid immediate legal pushback, by mid-2025 the agency initiated an 'accelerated' process to substantially revise the rule.
In Asia, super apps like WeChat and Grab have in many respects leapfrogged traditional banking, blending payments, messaging and services in ways that blur the line between finance and daily life. An agent could delay a payment by hours to smooth your cash flow, shift your investments automatically based on real world data, or negotiate new terms by pooling you into collective offers alongside other users. More interesting still, agents are already starting to work together. One manages your investments. Another reviews your insurance. A third monitors travel expenses. They speak to one another and coordinate to keep your broader finances in balance. It all happens silently.
This changes the market itself. At present, businesses compete for your attention. The attention economy is what built Google, Facebook and the advertising models that surround us. But in the world we are entering, companies will need to appeal to agents, not people. A restaurant will not entice you with a glossy advert but will bid to reach your dining agent. An insurance firm may adjust its pricing constantly to stay in favour with your agent’s algorithms. Marketing designed to pull emotional strings may become obsolete when your financial proxy responds only to value and reliability.
The philosophical weight of this shift deserves more attention than it receives. We are not simply automating tasks but potentially automating intention itself. Right now, you approve each suggestion from your assistant. But soon, you may wake to find that a decision has already been made. Klarna’s AI already processes returns without human intervention. Wealthfront rebalances portfolios while clients sleep.
Yet we should pause here. When Knight Capital’s algorithms went rogue in 2012, they burned through $440 million in three quarters of an hour. Scale that possibility down to personal finance and multiply it by millions of users. The prospect grows unsettling. Who answers when your helpful agent, following its own impeccable logic, makes a costly error?
The future is not waiting. It is unfolding. The invisible hand that Adam Smith once described is no longer a theoretical force. It is becoming real. It is becoming personal. It now belongs to you, working quietly on your behalf, if you are ready to let it. Whether this represents liberation or a subtle form of surrender remains an open question. Perhaps it is both. Perhaps that is precisely the point.
Article by Dr Ian Gauci
This article was first published in The Times of Malta of the 31 August 2025.
Photo credits: Times of Malta