{"topic":"fiduciary-duty","title":"fiduciary duty","url":"https://theexchange.tech/archive/fiduciary-duty","description":"Dispatches on fiduciary duty for AI agents in financial services.","questions":[],"count":4,"startHere":[],"articles":[{"title":"M1's brochure says no person writes or edits its AI's advice. That makes the rulebook the adviser.","url":"https://theexchange.tech/articles/m1s-brochure-says-no-person-writes-or-edits-its-ais-advice-that-makes-the-rulebook-the-adviser","json":"https://theexchange.tech/articles/m1s-brochure-says-no-person-writes-or-edits-its-ais-advice-that-makes-the-rulebook-the-adviser.json","excerpt":"M1 Advisor's Form ADV says no personnel generate or modify client-specific advice for its 11,400 accounts. Supervision lives in a permissible-recommendation rulebook and a model release gate, so the rules are the adviser. Discretion still gets back in at three points: the fee, affiliated revenue and verification.","publishDate":"2026-10-16T14:00:00.000Z","author":"Dean Whitfield","topics":["rules-vs-discretion","m1","fiduciary-duty","form-adv","model-governance","conflicts-of-interest","client-facing-agents"]},{"title":"Vanguard's investors credit chatbots with objectivity. Objectivity is a rule you publish, not a tone you project.","url":"https://theexchange.tech/articles/vanguards-investors-credit-chatbots-with-objectivity-objectivity-is-a-rule-you-publish-not-a-tone-you-project","json":"https://theexchange.tech/articles/vanguards-investors-credit-chatbots-with-objectivity-objectivity-is-a-rule-you-publish-not-a-tone-you-project.json","excerpt":"In Vanguard's survey of 6,686 investors, about four in ten AI users said chatbots beat human advisors at avoiding conflicts of interest. Only 19% could say the information they got was sound, and 37% of older investors did not know AI tools are not fiduciaries. That perceived objectivity is a guess the user makes for you. Publish the rule that would justify it.","publishDate":"2026-10-08","author":"Dean Whitfield","topics":["rules-vs-discretion","vanguard","investor-trust","fiduciary-duty","objectivity","disclosure","client-facing-agents"]},{"title":"Regulators wrote agentic AI out of scope. Underwriters wrote it out of the policy.","url":"https://theexchange.tech/articles/regulators-wrote-agentic-ai-out-of-scope-underwriters-wrote-it-out-of-the-policy","json":"https://theexchange.tech/articles/regulators-wrote-agentic-ai-out-of-scope-underwriters-wrote-it-out-of-the-policy.json","excerpt":"On 1 January 2026, ISO published three generative-AI exclusions for general liability, and W.R. Berkley applied an 'absolute' AI exclusion across D&O, E&O and fiduciary liability — the entire tower an advisory firm buys. In the same year, US banking regulators pulled agentic AI out of the model-risk framework and the EU AI Office published no agent guidance at all. Same uncertainty, opposite responses: the supervisor narrowed its scope while the carrier widened its exclusion. Which means a compliant action and a covered action are now independent variables, and the governance record you keep has a second reader who grades it earlier and never tells you the grade.","publishDate":"2026-09-14","author":"Hugh Mercer","topics":["risk-humility","liability","insurance","errors-and-omissions","governance","fiduciary-duty"]},{"title":"State the rule now: Congress presses the SEC on fiduciary duty for trading agents","url":"https://theexchange.tech/articles/state-the-rule-now-congress-presses-the-sec-on-fiduciary-duty-for-trading-agents","json":"https://theexchange.tech/articles/state-the-rule-now-congress-presses-the-sec-on-fiduciary-duty-for-trading-agents.json","excerpt":"Two House lawmakers just handed the SEC 13 questions about AI agents that trade for retail investors. Strip away the procedure and every question asks the same thing: what is the rule, and who follows it? An agent that waits for the answer is already behind.","publishDate":"2026-07-03","author":"Dean Whitfield","topics":["regulation","fiduciary-duty","trading-agents","sec","compliance"]}]}