Over the past year, a growing number of the advisers and fund managers we work with have asked the same question: “Can we run an AI model in-house, so client data never leaves the building?”
The answer is yes, and the technology side is more approachable than most firms expect. One quiet desktop machine in the $3,000–$5,000 range, two free pieces of software, and your employees can ask plain-language questions against the firm’s own operations manual, with nothing ever leaving your walls. The harder part is running it in a way that holds up under Rule 206(4)-7, Reg S-P, and Rule 204-2. That program is exactly what this article lays out: the hardware (leasing included), the Ollama + AnythingLLM stack, a concrete “ask the operations manual” workflow, and the eight-point compliance program an examiner would expect to see around it.
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