On the 250th anniversary of American independence, this year’s ISDA Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held in Boston, a city that played a prominent role in the American Revolution. In his opening remarks, ISDA chief executive Scott O’Malia drew a parallel between those events and what he described as a revolution currently taking place in financial markets – a transformation driven by rapid advances in technology.

That transformation formed the basis for much of the first day of the conference, with discussions on the evolving legislative and regulatory framework for digital assets, the efficiencies tokenisation can bring to collateral processes, the outstanding legal questions that need to be addressed to enable the safe and efficient use of digital assets, and the impact of artificial intelligence on financial markets.

These issues may not be affecting everyone’s day job right now, but they are dominating the US regulatory agenda – making it important that the implications are discussed and understood. But technology wasn’t the only focus of the AGM. Following publication of the revised US Basel III endgame proposal on March 19, and with the first US Treasury clearing mandate fast approaching at the end of December, regulatory issues were also a core discussion point. We were fortunate to welcome Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Michael Selig, Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner Mark Uyeda and Bank of England executive director of prudential policy David Bailey for keynote sessions on the current regulatory agenda.

This issue of IQ provides a snapshot of some of the issues discussed at the event. ISDA would like to take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors and exhibitors, our speakers and our delegates. We’re already looking forward to the next AGM in Singapore, so please save the date: April 13-15, 2027.