SEC Commissioner at ICI Innovate: What's Next to Come on Crypto and AI

ICI's Eric Pan and SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Discussed the Evolving Asset Management Landscape at ICI's Innovate Conference in Houston

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- ICI President and CEO Eric Pan and Hester Peirce, Commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) held a virtual fireside chat for ICI's 2026 Innovate Conference in Houston, Texas. Among a range of topics, the pair discussed the emergence of AI in the asset management industry, tokenization, and money market funds.

See below for highlights from Commissioner Peirce's remarks and links to timestamped excerpts and the full video:

When discussing tokenization Commissioner Peirce noted:

How do the markets for those two things [tokenization and equity securities] interact? I think it's important for people to be thinking about what kinds of approaches make sense for tokenization. We have put out a no action letter to DTCC and they're running an experiment with tokenization. We encourage others to think about experimenting with tokenization.

And when Pan asked about the regulatory considerations that need to be kept in mind, the Commissioner elaborated and alluded to pending guidance to come from the agency.

"Money market funds were the early, early pioneers in this area. And so, I think we just really want to have a conversation that brings in legal realities and operational realities about what this actually means to tokenize something."

"We've put in guardrails there and those guardrails apply to tokenized money market funds as they do to non-tokenized money market funds…And I expect that we will provide some interpretive guidance in some form or another. Whether that is through a formal rulemaking or whether that's through frequently asked questions or whether that's something a little more informal remains to be seen."

In the conversation, Pan and Peirce discussed the inevitable integration of AI in asset management.

"There is real value for human judgment. And as with any other technology, the beauty of AI is that it can make us more efficient as human beings. It can help us to save our talent and our time for the things that we're really good at. But I don't think that we're going to see, 'hey, I just [displaced] all the humans'…It's going to make, providing tailored advice, whether that's about proxy voting or whether that's about investing, much easier to provide. Tailored portfolios are going to be easier to design. So, I think it will have effects on this industry, as it does on every other.

Watch Pan and Peirce's full remarks here.

ICI's Innovate Conference is the premier conference for the intersection of technology and fund operations. For the full program go to https://www.ici.org/events/26-ici-innovate-program.

About ICI

The Investment Company Institute (ICI) is the leading association representing the asset management industry in service of individual investors. ICI's members include mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), closed-end funds, and unit investment trusts (UITs) in the United States, and UCITS and similar funds offered to investors in other jurisdictions. Its members manage $43.5 trillion invested in funds registered under the US Investment Company Act of 1940, serving more than 120 million investors. Members manage an additional $10.8 trillion in regulated fund assets managed outside the United States. ICI also represents its members in their capacity as investment advisers to collective investment trusts (CITs) and retail separately managed accounts (SMAs). ICI Associate Members include service providers to member firms and CIT trust companies. ICI has offices in Washington DC, Brussels, and London.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Investment Company Institute