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Know your agent: What regulated trading needs before it trusts AI
AI agents are already shaping execution decisions in regulated markets, but the industry still has no agreed way to identify them, authorise them or trace what they did.
Matthew Cheung, CEO of ipushpull, speaks to Rebecca Healey, Managing Partner of Redlap Consulting and author of the Mindful Markets newsletter. Rebecca co-chairs the FIX EMEA and FIX AI Working Groups, sits on the FCA and ESMA Secondary Markets Advisory Committees, and was Credit Suisse's first registered electronic trader for European cash equities.
The conversation covers the case for a verified legal entity identifier attached to every agent, why "know your agent" has to sit alongside know your customer, and why one-and-done model testing no longer survives contact with agentic workflows.
Rebecca also explains why FIX tag 527 is interpreted differently across sell side firms, what happens to MCP the moment a message leaves the building, and what the Mythos withdrawal exposed about operational resilience when a frontier model can disappear in days.
Discussed in this episode
- No LEI, no agent: linking agent identity to the firm's legal entity identifier
- KYA instead of KYC: intent, guardrails and the deterministic control envelope
- Runtime governance versus annual model risk sign-off
- Where FIX, ISO TC68, MCP, A2A and FIDO each fit- Sovereign AI, Chinese open-source models and business continuity
- Why the trader's job gets more complex rather than disappearing
Rebecca Healey
Founder, Redlap Consulting
With over 25 years of experience, Rebecca is recognised as a leading authority on market structure, regulatory reform, and the transformative power of technology in financial services. Writing research on how technology can address systemic challenges and enhance market efficiency for participants and investors alike since 2011, Rebecca’s thought leadership spans topics such as the rise of AI and fintech in capital markets, the digitalization of assets, the evolution of carbon markets, and the shift toward ESG and sustainability in asset management.