Which AI Chat Solution is Built for RIA Compliance?

Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) operate in one of the most tightly regulated segments of financial services. Every client conversation, recommendation, and note is subject to oversight — and increasingly, those interactions are powered by AI. But not all AI tools are created equal when it comes to Regulation S-P (privacy) and SEC Rule 204-2 (books and records).

As the market floods with enterprise AI solutions — from OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise to Microsoft Copilot — RIAs are asking:

“Which platform can I actually trust to meet my compliance needs?”

At Knapsack, we’ve been designing with these constraints from the beginning. That means building privacy-first infrastructure, integrating recordkeeping workflows, and ensuring advisors and supervisors can use LLMs without regulatory risk.

🧾 Comparing Compliance Readiness

To help advisors, compliance teams, and CTOs evaluate their options, we created a side-by-side chart comparing:

• Knapsack Studio
• ChatGPT Enterprise
• Microsoft Copilot

Each is evaluated on critical compliance dimensions, including:

• Data residency and ownership
• Support for Reg S-P privacy controls
• SEC 204-2-aligned logging, WORM storage compatibility
• Auditability and supervisory access
• Deployment model and configurability
  

💬 Key Takeaways

• Knapsack Studio is the only solution where the RIA controls all data. Chats can be stored in your private cloud or on-prem, with built-in audit trails, retention logic, and supervisory queues.
• ChatGPT Enterprise offers some enterprise protections (like zero data retention mode) but lacks financial compliance infrastructure — no built-in recordkeeping or supervisory workflows.
• Microsoft Copilot excels at Microsoft 365 productivity but is not tailored for SEC or FINRA requirements. Everything from retention to audit needs to be layered on via Microsoft Purview or third-party DLP systems.

✅ Why Knapsack Wins

Knapsack isn’t a general-purpose AI shell retrofitted for finance. It’s built from the ground up to support:

• Advisory workflows
• Compliance reviews
• Books and records obligations
• Custom LLM pipelines deployed inside your perimeter

Whether you’re a CTO trying to enable AI securely or a compliance officer evaluating risk, Knapsack lets you say yes to AI — without saying maybe to the SEC.