RESOURCES
How to vet an AI vendor, written for the person who has to sign off.
Practical material for compliance officers and chief operating officers at advisory firms. Everything here is free to read, free to copy, and free to send to vendors we compete with. None of it asks for your email.
- NOTHING GATED
NO FORM CITE IT FREELY
Start here.
AI vendor due diligence
The questionnaire to send any AI vendor before signing, grouped by the themes examiners return to: governance, what data leaves the firm, model use and retention, human review, books and records, Reg S-P, access, and claims. Balau AI’s own answers are filled in beneath each question.
An AI governance policy for an advisory firm
No rule tells an adviser to write an AI policy by name. Several assume the firm has already made the decisions one would contain. Scope, risk tiers, what stays human, approval, disclosure, the inventory, and the annual review.
Reg S-P incident response with an AI vendor in scope
The vendor has 72 hours to tell you. You have 30 days to tell your clients. What has to be in the contract, and in the plan, before the gap between those two numbers becomes your problem.
AI meeting notes and Rule 204-2
One client meeting, six artifacts. Which are books and records, how long they have to survive, what happens when a human edits the summary, and why the broker-dealer rules quoted in most vendor marketing are the wrong ones.
WHY WE PUBLISH THIS
Useful even if you buy someone else.
The questions on these pages are the questions we want to be asked. Balau AI answers them inline, in the same words we would use in a procurement review, including where the honest answer is that a program is in progress rather than complete.
A vendor that will only answer these questions under a mutual non-disclosure agreement is telling you something. So is one whose public answers are stronger than the ones in its contract.
Documentation of our posture, sub-processors, and practices is available to prospective customers on request at trust@balau.ai. The public security overview is at balau.ai/security.
These pages are general information about regulatory obligations that commonly apply to investment advisers in the United States. They are not legal or compliance advice, and they are not a substitute for reading the rule text with your own counsel. Balau AI does not provide investment advice and does not execute transactions.