The House Financial Services Committee released the staff report from its Bipartisan Working Group on artificial intelligence (AI) Thursday. America’s Credit Unions and its members participated in the working group. A committee hearing on AI and financial services is scheduled for Tuesday and an America’s Credit Unions member credit union will testify.
The report responds to concerns that AI will lead to discrimination, noting regulators generally stated the use of AI does not absolve entities from complying with anti-discrimination and other consumer protection laws. Panelists addressing the use of AI by financial institutions also noted that the use of machine learning models to analyze alternative data could help lenders accurately assess risk and facilitate broader access to credit.
The working group “takeaways” also observed that throughout the sessions, regulators and other expert panelists pointed to the application of existing laws and regulations to AI, including antidiscrimination laws. The tech-neutral approach of existing consumer protection and fair lending rules supported a related inference that using AI does not exempt market participants from existing legal obligations.
This aligns with America’s Credit Unions’ stance—and recent testimony—that existing statutory frameworks are sufficiently broad to address the use of AI within the already highly supervised domain of financial services.
