Met a friend today. His service business didn't make it. Took a year off to reset. Today's conversation wasn't about what went wrong. It was about what's possible now that wasn't possible 18 months ago - AI voice assistants, AI-powered healthcare hardware, cybersecurity for telecom. The landscape he left isn't the landscape he's coming back to. That's the opportunity. To anyone sitting out a rebuild - what's changed most in your industry since you stepped away?

Most CxOs treat AI governance as a cost center, something the legal team handles after the product ships. The fintechs that will win the next 18 months are treating it as a product feature. "Audit-ready by design" is becoming a sales argument, not just a compliance checkbox. Are you building governance in, or bolting it on after?

Most "AI agents" in financial services right now are just chatbots with extra steps. True agentic AI makes decisions, takes actions, and handles exceptions autonomously. What most vendors ship: a workflow with an LLM bolted on. CxOs - when you ask vendors, "What decisions does this agent make without human review?" What answer do you actually get?

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has released its Draft Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2026–2030, setting out the agency's strategic priorities for the next five years. Among its key proposals, the Plan identifies digital assets and distributed ledger technologies as the first regulatory objective under Goal 1, reflecting the SEC's intention to establish a more structured regulatory framework for the sector. The Draft Strategic Plan outlines priorities including clarifying the application of securities laws to digital assets, facilitating compliant capital formation through tokenized offerings, supporting the development of on-chain financial infrastructure, and ensuring that custody, trading, and staking services can operate under appropriate regulatory oversight. The Plan also emphasizes the importance of coordination between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to provide greater regulatory clarity while maintaining investor protection and market integrity. Source: [sec.gov/files/draft-strategi…](sec.gov/files/draft-strategi…) #DigitalAssets #Blockchain #CryptoPolicy #FinancialRegulation #CapitalMarkets #Tokenization #SEC

The hiring paradox "We're looking for a senior AI engineer." Requirements: → 8 years of LLM experience → Expert in a framework released 18 months ago → Salary: "competitive. No wonder the talent gap is 3.2:1. 😀🙂

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has proposed allowing certain authorised investment funds to hold cryptoasset exchange-traded notes (cETNs), subject to a limit of 10% of scheme property. The proposal, published as part of the FCA’s Quarterly Consultation Paper No. 52 (CP26/17), seeks to permit eligible UCITS and certain non-UCITS retail funds to gain limited exposure to cETNs. The FCA notes that the measure is intended to keep authorised funds aligned with evolving investor demand while maintaining appropriate consumer protection safeguards. The consultation follows the FCA’s earlier decision to permit retail investors to access crypto exchange-traded notes and aims to align the treatment of authorised funds with broader developments in the UK’s cryptoasset regulatory framework. Source:fca.org.uk/publications/cons… #CryptoAssets #DigitalAssets #ETNs #AssetManagement #InvestmentFunds #FCA #FinancialRegulation #UKFinance #Web3 #FintechNews

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: The Five Forces Squeezing Mid-Market Fintech CTOs - And the Co-Creation Model That Lets Them Ship. linkedin.com/pulse/five-forc… via @LinkedIn

Infosys. Cognizant. HCLTech. All racing to hire "Forward Deployed Engineers." One role. Three jobs: PM engineer consultant. AI didn't just change what we build; it changed who clients want sitting across the table. If your team can't explain the business impact of their own code, that's the gap