Hester Peirce argues financial privacy should be the default, not the exception

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce wants your financial life to be private by default. She is making that case with less than two weeks left at the agency. Peirce said financial privacy should be treated as a right, and that wanting it should not make anyone look suspicious. For a regulator, that is an unusual position to hold. For Peirce, it is a familiar one. What Peirce said at SIFMA Peirce laid out her argument in a September 23, 2026, speech at the SIFMA Digital Assets Conference. Her central claim is that privacy is a fundamental right, not a red flag. She took direct aim at Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules. These frameworks require financial firms to verify customer identities and monitor activity for signs of illicit finance. Think of the forms, ID uploads and source-of-funds questions that come with opening almost any account. Peirce described the scale of that data gathering as excessive surveillance. She argued it does too little to protect the people whose information gets collected. Her proposed fix leans on cryptography. Peirce called for adopting privacy-preserving tools such as zero-knowledge proofs, so personal information can move securel...