Financial regulators aren’t ready to write AI rules yet. They’re running four roundtables first.
Treasury’s official press release confirms that the Department of the Treasury and the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) launched the AI Innovation Series on March 23, 2026. The initiative operates under Treasury’s Artificial Intelligence Transformation Office (AITO), a dedicated office whose existence alone signals how seriously the department is treating AI as an institutional priority.
The series will convene four roundtables bringing together financial institutions, technology firms, and regulators. The stated purpose is to explore AI use cases and pathways to scale innovation in the financial sector while maintaining safety and soundness. Specific roundtable dates have not been announced.
For financial sector compliance professionals: this is pre-rulemaking activity. Formal participation in these roundtables is an opportunity to shape the regulatory frame before it hardens into requirements. Financial institutions that want their use cases represented in the regulatory conversation, and that want regulators to understand the practical constraints of AI deployment in banking and insurance, should be paying attention to when roundtable invitations open.
A brief explainer on the two bodies involved: FSOC (Financial Stability Oversight Council) is the inter-agency council established after the 2008 financial crisis to identify systemic risks to the U.S. financial system. It brings together the heads of the Fed, Treasury, SEC, CFTC, and other financial regulators. When FSOC convenes around AI, it’s not a single agency exploring a technical question, it’s the coordinating body for financial system stability taking AI risk seriously enough to put it on the systemic agenda. AITO (Artificial Intelligence Transformation Office) is Treasury’s in-house AI governance unit, positioned to translate AI policy into department operations and external regulatory posture.
That combination, systemic risk oversight body plus in-house AI office, tells you the frame Treasury is using. AI in financial services isn’t being treated as a technology adoption question. It’s being treated as a potential systemic risk that needs a coordinated regulatory response before the risk materializes.
This development connects directly to Dimon’s remarks this same week. Dimon called for government action on AI labor disruption; Treasury and FSOC are building the pre-regulatory infrastructure that will eventually govern how AI is deployed in the financial sector. Those aren’t the same initiative, but they’re addressing the same underlying question: what happens to the financial system, its stability, its workforce, and its customers, as AI adoption accelerates?
What to watch: roundtable dates (once announced), which financial institutions participate, and whether the series produces a public summary or guidance document. Pre-rulemaking processes that produce public records often serve as the evidentiary foundation for eventual formal guidance. Getting your institution’s perspective into the record now matters.