Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTPatrick DonachieThu, June 25, 2026 at 10:39 PM GMT+2 6 min readportishead1/iStock/Getty Images PlusYou can find original article here WealthManagement. Subscribe to our free daily WealthManagement newsletters.Legislators want to know how the Securities and Exchange Commission is overseeing agentic artificial intelligence trading on registered brokerage platforms.In a letter from Democratic members of the House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee to SEC Chair Paul Atkins this week, lawmakers were particularly worried about customers' use of third-party AI agents in SEC-registered brokerage platforms. In the letter, legislators (including U.S. Reps. Bill Foster and Brad Sherman, the respective ranking members of the Financial Services and Capital Markets Subcommittees) noted that brokerage platform disclosures clarify that their platforms can't guarantee the accuracy of agents' outputs and that agentic trading involves "significant risk." How, they asked Atkins, does characterizing AI agents as third-party tools align with retail investors' expectations for investor protections on the platforms?"The AI firms developing and deploying these agents have thus far operated largely outside the securities regulatory framework, even though their systems are making or enabling consequential investment decisions on behalf of retail investors," the lawmakers wrote.While brokerage firms continue to develop internal AI agents to boost operational efficiency (and agentic trading assistants for investors), some platforms are welcoming third-party agents. Late last month, Robinhood Financial declared it was "open to agents," allowing customers to build them and offering direct access to Robinhood's platform, "without the workarounds of unofficial APIs holding you back elsewhere." The firm also unveiled its "Agentic Credit Card," a system that allows agents to spend on clients' behalf.According to the Democratic lawmakers, if agents are trained on similar data, there's a risk of "correlated trading decisions" and a form of "herding behavior" that could increase volatility or heighten market stress (and the risks only heighten with AI agents' ability to trade rapidly and at scale).In response, the lawmakers asked Atkins to answer 13 questions, probing the extent to which the agency has worked with retail brokerage platforms on their allowances for agentic trading (and whether the agency offered any no-action relief or formal approvals to platforms or AI developers).Additionally, lawmakers want to know what responsibility the agency believes AI developers bear when their agents execute trades on behalf of clients, and whether the use of a third-party agent on a platform would "alter, limit or absolve the broker/dealer of any obligations as registered broker/dealers under the federal securities laws."Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info