Survey Finds More AI Governance, Less Interest in 24/7 Trading

While firms across the derivatives markets remain upbeat on the impact of AI and are now implementing governance structures, another potential innovation – 24/7 trading – has found less support amongst market participants, according to a new survey.

The survey from Acuiti is the first that consolidates what were previously separate quarterly reports focused on different participant segments, into a single, market-wide publication, and finds that 44% now report significant, quantifiable time and cost savings from AI.

It also finds, however, that firms are taking very different approaches to governance. All banks reported that they controlled employees’ usage of AI and two thirds had established a specific AI risk committee to monitor AI policy. Prop firms were at the other end of the spectrum with around half allowing relatively free use by employees and a third currently having no formal governance policy in place.

Hedge funds were more likely to govern AI within existing risk committees, rather than establishing a new committee, while around a fifth allowed relatively free usage among staff.

The survey also found what Acuiti terms “relatively consistent scepticism” across the market when it comes to 24/7 trading. On the sell side, 48% said they had seen no interest from clients in the concept, while 21% reported “a notable minority” are interested. Interestingly, given the potential for the firms, 65% of prop trading firms were opposed to weekend trading, with just 5% definitely in favour.

The finding is perhaps less surprisingly, on the sell-side, where extra services and resources would have to be provided to support client activity.

The survey also found that 64% of firms performed ahead of “a typical year” in H1 2026, while only 12% performed worse. There was potentially challenging news for CME is a specific question asking if the Merc’s migration to Google Cloud would be a challenge for sell-side firms that do not have a relationship with the provider. Almost a third of sell side execution desks believed onboarding a new cloud provider could take more than a year.