York’s Guildhall has seen plenty over the centuries. Built in 1445, it has hosted council meetings and criminal trials, and is thought to be where a £200,000 ransom for King Charles I was counted out.

On Wednesday, money was still on the agenda as FinTech North returned to the city for the first day of its Northern FinTech Summit 2026. This time, the discussion included whether AI agents could end up triggering bank runs while we’re asleep.

The possibility was raised by Colin Payne, head of innovation at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), during the opening Chris Sier Keynote, delivered in memory of FinTech North’s former chairman.

Payne warned that a ‘swarm of agents’ all making financial decisions at once could cause serious problems, especially when they’re acting faster than any human can keep track of. AI agents can already pay bills, negotiate with suppliers and manage everyday tasks on our behalf.

He described what he called a ‘trust inversion’ – we’ve got the technology, but how many of us are ready to let an AI agent loose on our bank accounts?

“The technology is here now. It’s arriving before consumers have got trust in it,” he warned.

Payne brought up George Hudson , York’s ‘Railway King’, who helped put the city on the railway map before things went rather badly wrong. In 1849, it turned out Hudson had been paying dividends using investors’ capital rather than profits. Not quite what the people putting their money into the railways had signed up for.

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