CFTC Commissioner Mersinger Addresses Retail Clearing Access and CFTC Climate Initiatives

CFTC Commissioner Summer K. Mersinger weighed in on the current debate on offering retail access to clearing outside of traditional futures commission merchant models and raised concerns over "mission creep... in the name of addressing climate change."

In an address at an FIA Commodities Forum, Ms. Mersinger said that the debate about retail clearing access goes beyond crypto and that "new technology and new registrants are increasingly focused on offering retail traders access to our cleared derivatives markets through new business models that can apply equally to crypto and non-crypto derivatives." She asserted that the success or failure of a particular innovation should be determined by the marketplace, not the CFTC, and that the CFTC's role should be to address whether the proposal "poses an undue risk of disruption or other harm to the markets and those who participate in them." She urged a "fulsome discussion" around whether changes to CFTC rules should be made to accommodate new business models.

Ms. Mersinger also highlighted that she is a sponsor of the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee. She posited that there is "significant mission-creep across the federal financial regulatory agencies in the name of addressing climate change." She defended her recent vote to authorize a Request for Information on climate-related financial risk (see previous coverage), but then questioned the potential use of the "information we are requesting because we do not have the statutory authority under the CEA to promulgate rules on many of these topics." She also questioned why the agriculture community is being excluded from climate change deliberations.