CFTC advisory panel adopts report urging NIST-aligned AI risk management for financial markets

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Technology Advisory Committee on AI Day voted to adopt a subcommittee report that lays out a risk-management approach for artificial intelligence in regulated U.S. financial markets.

The emerging-and-evolving-technology subcommittee proposed five near-term steps for the agency: host a public roundtable and outreach to registered entities; assess adopting the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) for the sector; build an inventory of existing rules and perform a gap analysis; coordinate CFTC approaches with other federal financial agencies; and expand CFTC staff technical capacity and budget to support AI oversight. Co-chairs Nicole Turner Lee and Todd Smith framed the recommendations as pragmatic, risk-based guidance rather than prescriptive rules.

"This is the start of the conversation," co-chair Nicole Turner Lee told the committee, summarizing the report's intent to provide a flexible, use-case-aware set of practices for market participants and regulators. Todd Smith said the report focused on governance and operationalizing established risk-management steps such as map, measure, manage and govern.

Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero, who convened the meeting, praised the subcommittee's work and urged continued interagency cooperation. "I'm incredibly proud of this subcommittee," she said during closing remarks.

The motion to adopt the report passed on a roll-call vote after discussion. The designated federal officer recorded the vote as 19 yes, 0 no and 1 abstention; the committee announced the report will be transmitted to the Commission for consideration.

The report, about 65 pages in its public form, lists a glossary of AI terms, a partial set of financial-sector use cases (trading and investment algorithms, customer communications, model monitoring, surveillance and back-office automation) and a catalog of existing regulatory instruments that can be leveraged for AI governance. It recommends the CFTC use NIST's flexible, measurable approach as a baseline while tailoring priorities to market harms such as fraud, market manipulation and operational risk.

Committee members repeatedly emphasized that the recommendations are advisory and risk-focused, not a blueprint for immediate prescriptive regulation. Several members urged the CFTC staff to use the report to guide outreach and to refine any sector-specific operational guidance in collaboration with other federal agencies.

The committee's adoption sets a formal advisory record for the CFTC to consider as it studies AI in markets. Next steps identified in the report include staff-led public engagement, an internal regulatory inventory, and a gap analysis that would identify where targeted rulemaking or supervisory guidance might be needed.

The TAC adjourned after the vote.