AI Registers with the SEC
An AI RIA registers, banks scale usage, and regulators respond
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NEWS
AI as Money Manager
From Investment News:
Era, a San Francisco startup founded by ex-Stripe employees, has registered with the SEC as an RIA that delivers investment advice through AI without client-facing human advisors.
Era’s Context financial data hub connects to AI agents such as Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini, among others. Clients can subscribe to predetermined portfolio mixes for their investments and access automated services such as spending analysis, savings round-ups, money transfers between accounts, budgeting, and portfolio rebalancing.
As a registered investment adviser, Era is held to the same fiduciary standard as other RIAs, meaning it must act in the client’s best interests, according to Era CEO Alex Norcliffe.
Rather than rely on raw LLM outputs, the firm says it engineered a system to deliver consistent, traceable advice across clients with similar profiles.
While those who are old enough to remember those thundering herd commercials aren’t likely to trust AI with their money, younger folks are. About 41% of Gen Z and millennials would allow an AI assistant to manage their investments, versus 14% of Baby Boomers, according to a World Economic Forum survey.
AI Joins the C-suite at HSBC
HSBC named David Rice as its first chief AI officer, tasked with scaling AI across the bank, including giving staff access to generative tools for internal workflows and customer interactions.
More Wall Street firms will elevate AI executives to the C-Suite. The technology is slowly evolving into a company’s “brain.”
DoorDash Turns Couriers Into AI and Robot Trainers
From Bloomberg:
DoorDash Inc. is paying delivery couriers in some markets to submit video clips and complete other digital tasks to help improve artificial intelligence and robotics models, following competitors that have found creative new uses for gig workers in the AI boom.
The latest models draw attention as they surpass prior state-of-the-art benchmarks, but their voracious appetite for data is often overlooked. As I wrote last week:
The latest models have hoovered up the whole internet and that’s still not enough. Last year, OpenAI was paying YouTubers as much as $4 for a minute of their unused footage.
Legacy firms are sitting on decades of data. Unlocking it is hard, but it’s an advantage. You can’t hire DoorDash drivers to mimic financial transactions.
Trump Pushes for Federal Control Over AI
The Trump administration is pushing Congress to preempt some state AI laws and create a lighter national framework, while still leaving states authority in areas such as fraud, consumer protection, zoning, and their own use of AI. The administration argues that a patchwork of state AI laws could create conflicting requirements for companies operating nationally. A federal standard would reduce some state-by-state compliance differences, though states would still retain authority in several areas.
So far, there have been few changes to financial regulatory rules. U.S. regulation sets broad standards and applies them to new technologies like AI rather than writing detailed, tech-specific rules.
Fed:Fed Expects Banks to Expand AI Use Beyond Low-Risk Work
A senior Federal Reserve official said banks are still using AI in limited, low-risk areas like summarization and coding, but expects adoption to expand into more material functions as use cases mature.
The Fed is not treating this as a new regulatory category. Existing expectations around model risk, data quality, and governance apply, with a continued emphasis on testing and human oversight. “Judgment and decisionmaking will remain with subject matter experts.”
Supervisors are also starting to use AI themselves, including to analyze earnings calls, filings, and other public data as part of bank monitoring.
WHAT ELSE I’M READING
Mark Zuckerberg Is Building an AI Agent to Help Him Be CEO WSJ
Goldman Sachs Puts AI at Core of New Strategy Banking Exchange
VanEck CEO Details AI’s Impact on ETF Asset Management ETF Trends
AI Has Already Changed Software Contracts: They’re Shorter BBG
AI in banking ‘not a silver bullet’: Mike Mayo BankingDive
AI boom risks widening wealth divide, says BlackRock’s Larry Fink Guardian
Quilter signs deal with AI adviser tool Aveni for its network Citywire
Norway wealth fund moves towards some AI-driven decisions but with humans in control Reuters
INTERVIEW
Morgan Stanley’s ex-AI head: Start with the Work, Not the Model
Most firms are still stuck in pilots. The constraint is how work is structured, not model capability.
RESEARCH
AI spots when companies change which metrics they highlight
Firms that frequently swap metrics tend to underperform. LLMs improve detection by extracting full phrases instead of keywords.
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