Frank Rotman's Kepler Correction: AI Agents Are the Rational Customer

Frank Rotman's "Kepler Correction" says the rational customer banking waited eight years for has finally arrived, and it's an AI agent.

In 2018, QED Investors co-founder Frank Rotman argued in "The Copernican Revolution in Banking" that banks can't be everything to everyone, and that share would move to best-in-class providers once customers could compare everything. Now at 37Maru, he grades that thesis himself in a 64-slide 2026 deck, "Banking In The Agentic Era." His conclusion: customers had the information but didn't act. Friction was the missing term, and AI agents that act on a customer's behalf could remove it.

• The 2018 model, problem, prediction and question, plus Rotman's own scorecard (Big Tech: D)
• The "Inertia Tax," the profit banks earn when customers don't act on what they know
• Three Keplerian laws: path of least resistance, banks fight back, agents become the channel
• The "Quiet Run": why deposit beta could approach 1.0 when agents compare rates daily
• Permission, recourse and trust, and Rotman's case for a licensed, fiduciary AI Delegate

Agent savings stories cited in the deck are self-reported. Rotman discloses that he is building a company in agentic finance.

Read Frank Rotman's original work: "Banking In The Agentic Era: The Kepler Correction" (LinkedIn) and "The Copernican Revolution in Banking" (2018). Only Fintechs is independent commentary and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Frank Rotman, 37Maru or QED Investors.

Keywords: Frank Rotman, 37Maru, QED Investors, Kepler Correction, Copernican Revolution in Banking, AI agents, agentic finance, deposits, deposit beta, inertia tax, Mercury, Nubank, Chime, open banking

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