A RegFi Farewell: Caroline Stapleton on Regulation's Next Chapter

Well, Jerry, thank you very much for that really meaningful introduction to this episode and also for being the impetus behind getting this group together a couple of years ago when we started RegFi.

And to answer your question, I will say that for me, the recurring theme across the conversations that I've had on this podcast has been possibility.

So along with our guests, the co-hosts on this podcast, we've had so many discussions that are rooted in things that are concrete.

You know, the technologies that we have today, what regulations are already on the books, what consumers have historically needed from a financial services perspective, you know, how things have been and what things are today.

But we've also, in a way, as cheesy as it

sounds to say it this way, we've dared to dream about a future that looks different, but that also really isn't that far off.

And a lot of what we've talked about and a lot of this dreaming has been fueled by our growing experience with AI and our understanding of what it can do now and what we expect it will be able to do in the near term.

So some of the things that we've discussed on this podcast that were kind of in the hypothetical stage, but over the course of the time that I've been a part of this have actually come to fruition are things like AI being able to help consumers understand what products will work best for them and suit their needs, to be able to collect data, make recommendations, and then modify over time based on what the AI is learning from performance and from the decisions that it's making and recommendations that it's making for other people.

And then there's also the idea of AI helping potentially in a future state that I expect isn't far off, denied applicants for financial products, including credit products, understand what they might be able to do differently to get approved.

And Jerry, that's something you and I have been talking about for a long time since even prior to the podcast about how technology has the potential to revolutionize a denial process that has historically been kind of the end of the road and has left question marks in the minds of some consumers when they receive an adverse action notice.

They're going, okay, I have four, maybe four reasons as to why I didn't get approved for this credit, but how can I fix those? What can I change about that? And AI and similar kind of higher tech, more innovative tools may be able to help folks understand not only why it didn't work out for them in that application, but what they can do differently next time.

And I know we're going to talk about this a little bit today in a bit more detail, but agentic commerce making routine, but frankly time consuming and annoying transactions and decisions happen without even a thought.

I was going to say with just the barest thought, but actually without even having to think about them at all, or at least have a human think about them, simply based on that AI agent's understanding of our preferences.

And that's something that I think is already possible.

I don't know that we've seen it fully embraced yet.

I expect that going forward we will.

But these are all artificial intelligence related examples.

But thinking about themes of the episodes that I've been a part of on this podcast, that's been a huge piece of it.

It's just undeniable that AI has changed the entire discourse in financial technology and thinking about what regulation will look like in the future.

And I guess I'll say this too.

I don't know that all of our ideas, even the good ones, even the things that we've dreamed up and talked about with hosts, excuse me, our guests are going to happen, or at least maybe they won't happen in the way that we have envisioned them or the way that we ourselves would design them if we had those coding capabilities, which I guess AI could kind of give us if we had the time to do that.

Maybe they won't all come to fruition in exactly the way that we've envisioned them.

But I think a number of them will, like some already have and a number of them will.

And so being a part of the podcast has been really special for me because it's kind of allowed us to collaborate, the four of us with our guests and thought leadership that is real and that we're seeing happen in real time.

So it's been really interesting for me.