Figure wants to bring the mortgage market on-chain — and Washington is paying attention

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to join you for the fourth and final Investor Advisory Committee meeting of 2025. Before I share a few reflections, I must note that the views I express here today are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the SEC as an institution or of the other Commissioners. Of course, I also want to thank each of you for the time, expertise, and spirited commitment that you brought to the Committee this year. Your work is essential—our markets prosper when investors have confidence that our rules are fair, our processes are predictable, and our regulators are not smothering innovation out of fear. I convey and share in the agency’s appreciation for your dedicated service, and extend special thanks to Cristina Firvida, who will conclude her tenure as Investor Advocate at the end of January. Our work at the SEC should always be responsive to the needs and interests of investors, and Cristina has provided essential support in service of these objectives. Cristina, we wish you every success in your future endeavors and we thank you for the contributions that you have made to our agency and to investors as a whole. I am also grateful for the valuable insights that we heard during this morning’s panel discussion regarding regulatory changes in corporate governance. One of my top priorities as Chairman is to make being a public company an attractive proposition for more firms— and I look forward to engaging in this important work over the coming months as we guide the SEC back to the bedrock fundamentals on which our mandate is based. The next panel, meanwhile, will focus on how the Commission can modernize our rules to enable our markets to move on-chain. Distributed ledger technology and the tokenization of financial assets, including securities, have the potential to transform our capital markets. Our financial markets have long been the envy of the world, and to ensure that they remain so, U.S. firms and investors must have the opportunity to leverage this technology as they lead the future of global capital markets. Today, our rules assume that securities are issued, traded, and managed through layers of intermediaries, which help to address risks like information asymmetry and operational friction. But as we consider the rise of public blockchains and tokenization, we must acknowledge that these technologies have the capacity to streamline not only trading but the entire issuer-investor relationship. In other words, tokenization is not just about transforming how trades occur. It can also enable direct connectivity for proxy voting, dividend payments, and shareholder communications, reducing the need for multiple intermediaries in those processes as well. As we modernize our rules, we must consider the full scope of these changes, both in how markets trade and in how security ownership is recorded and serviced. I welcome the IAC’s assistance in helping us think through how to respond appropriately to these innovations. As with any technological shift, market participants are experimenting with different tokenization models, and I am interested to hear the panel’s thoughts about the implications of th As we consider the rise of public blockchains and tokenization, we must acknowledge that these technologies have the capacity to streamline not only trading but the entire issuer-investor relationship. In other words, tokenization is not just about transforming how trades occur. It can also enable direct connectivity for proxy voting, dividend payments, and shareholder communications, reducing the need for multiple intermediaries in those processes as well. If we want to boost innovation, investment, and jobs here in the United States, we must provide compliant pathways that allow market participants to leverage the unique capabilities of this new technology. A thoughtful exemptive framework—cabined, time limited, transparent, and anchored in strong investor protections—could allow the markets to develop on-chain models and give investors innovative new choices.