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Steven Lofchie is the Chief Legal Architect and a co-founder of Caffrey.AI, an AI platform built for law firms, banks, and the financial regulatory industry. He is also a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, where he advises financial institutions on securities laws, the Commodity Exchange Act, and broker-dealer regulation. Ranked by Chambers USA every year since 2007, he is the author of “Lofchie’s Guide to Broker-Dealer Regulation,” long considered the leading treatise on the subject.

Recent Articles & Comments

Market participants should be aware that while Chair Giancarlo is, in many respects, advocating for less U.S. regulation, and more deferences to home country regulators, he is not advocating for a deregulatory approach. In fact, in a number of regards, he would expand the scope of U.S. swaps regulation, perhaps most significantly as to swaps that are "arranged, negotiated or executed" in the United States by non-U.S. swap dealers. It is not clear what additional steps he would take…

There is a lot here, quite literally; it's long as speeches go, and it covers a lot of ground. Bottom line, the Commissioner believes that data is important, technology is important, and privacy is important. The Commissioner believes that the SEC should adopt more rules on these issues. But the question is what rules and to what end? For example, the suggestion that a financial market intermediary should inform its customers of a data breach seems reasonable; such notice may allow…

While the SEC talks the talk as to facilitating innovation, walking the walk is far more difficult. ETFs, for example, have become a significant product in the financial markets, and yet the SEC is only now considering a rule to routinize their issuance. As to cryptocurrency funds, one really has to question whether the SEC wants them to go forward, or is hoping that interest in the product is a bubble that will pop before the SEC is pushed to act. Compare with .

The CFPB's use of data in its study of financing of automobile purchases was heavily criticized. See . Accordingly, this may be an effort to formalize the CFPB's use of data so that its researchers are not tempted to pick the methodology that yields a desired result.