Forest Hill's Jeff Judge in MarketWatch: The one thing ChatGPT's new bank feature can't do for you

By Jeff Judge, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®, Managing Partner, Chesapeake Financial Planners, Forest Hill, MD.

OpenAI just made it possible to link ChatGPT directly to your bank accounts. Ask it about your spending, your balances, even your tax situation, and it answers using your real, live financial data.

MarketWatch reached out to me last week about it, and my answer came down to one word: fiduciary. ChatGPT isn't one. The company behind it can rewrite its terms of service whenever it wants, and the tool has no legal obligation to put your interest ahead of its own. When I work with a client's financial information, that obligation is not optional. SEC rules and a fiduciary duty govern how I use it, full stop.

For folks here in Harford County, this isn't an abstract tech story. A lot of our neighbors are exactly the kind of careful, organized people who'd actually use a tool like this, because it sounds efficient. But efficiency and accountability are two different things. If something goes wrong with how that data is used, there's no regulator you can call.

The takeaway I'd leave you with: convenience is real. So is what you're trading for it. Before you link any financial account to an AI tool, ask who's actually accountable if it gets your situation wrong, and what happens to your data if the company changes its mind.

This piece builds on "ChatGPT is ready to connect to your bank accounts. Should you let it in?," in MarketWatch (June 2026).

Jeff Judge, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®, is Managing Partner at Chesapeake Financial Planners in Forest Hill, MD. Book an intro call.