Artificial Intelligence

I know I can get enthusiastic about the promise of AI for policy work. But even I was surprised by the level of energy and curiosity at our AI Tools for Public Policy panel during last week’s Business-Government Relations Council (B-GRC) meeting in Charlottesville. Under the skillful moderation of Michele Lieber, our conversation began with an engaging exchange among the panelists, which included 🗽 Pat Utz of Abstract, Benjamin Turner of 9th Street Strategies and LegAide AI, and me. But the real spark came from the audience. The GR professionals in the room represented a wide range of...

Crowdsourcing + AI is a viable strategy for rulemaking in an era of smaller agency staffs. This seems to be emerging thinking in the Administration. The first sign was the deregulation suggestion form used with the spring's omnibus Deregulation RFI. The latest is last week's advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) in the personal financial data (1033) reconsideration. In the 1033 litigation, the CFPB promised the court an "expedited" reconsideration rulemaking. But how is using an ANPRM consistent with an expedited rulemaking? The optional ANPRM phase is usually skipped even in...

There is now a form on Regulations.gov for submitting deregulation ideas in response to last week's OMB RFI. A few observations: The form seems designed to support automated generation of draft Federal Register proposed and final rules through AI-augmented document assembly. The structure of the form roughly follows the structure of a proposed or final rule. It also includes instructions that clearly come from guidance to writers of Federal Register rules. (They forgot to take out this line: "If this is a final rule, you should respond to any relevant and timely comments.") In addition to...

DOGE’s focus on replacing humans with AI adds significance to this recent FRB OIG report on the Bank Exams Tailored to Risk (BETR) process, which tailors community bank exams to risk through model-driven off-site assessment. BETR models use forward-looking metrics to assign each institution a risk classification for each of 10 risk stripes. Each risk classification is associated with a suggested range of examination hours and tailored procedures. Examiners can then use qualitative factors to override the model-recommended classifications, hours, or procedures. The OIG report was relatively...

We help RegTech software companies and internal teams design, develop, and deliver products for financial services compliance, licensing, and regulatory affairs use cases. We support product management and testing with a unique blend of expert advice and artifacts that encapsulate domain knowledge. We also help teams engaged with financial services customers understand customer needs, communicate product capabilities, and ensure successful implementation. Services provided by the Regulatory Technology practice include: AI Support: We support every stage of AI solution development for...

RegTech builders increasingly ship products powered by AI and agentic systems that interact with regulatory texts, decision logic, and live operational data. We bring deep domain expertise in financial regulation to those efforts: curating high-quality training data and knowledge bases, reviewing architecture choices and prompting strategies, evaluating outputs for regulatory accuracy, and surfacing the failure modes specific to working with legal and regulatory content. We also help product teams understand customer needs, communicate capabilities to compliance and risk audiences, and...

BJ Sanford advises payments and fintech companies, U.S. and foreign banks, trade associations, investors, and policy and consulting firms. His practice centers on payments regulation, public policy, and the regulation of bank activities and structure. He also advises clients on regulatory capital, bank investments and control, affiliate transactions, the U.S. operations of foreign banks, and regulatory examinations. Payments regulation. BJ advises payments firms and banks on payment regulation, product development, and compliance with rules including Regulation E, Regulation Z, Regulation II...