BAFA Labs Inc.

BAFAos, in development at BAFA Labs

The engine computes. A licensed human decides. The chain proves it.

BAFAos is a compliance-grade planning platform being built for SEC-registered investment advisers. It is designed to log every action in a tamper-evident record, pass every client-affecting decision through a human approval gate, and let an examiner pull the full history on demand.

Request early access See the five engines

Illustrative example of how BAFAos is designed to work

  1. Sentinel™ flags Beneficiary form on file is unsigned.
  2. A licensed human decides Adviser approves: request a signed form from the client.
  3. The chain records it Entry sealed and linked to the one before it.
Engine
Sentinel
Decision
Approved by the household’s adviser
Entry hash
9f3c…a41e
Previous
2b7d…c08f
Examiner view
Full history available on demand
Illustrative example: the Sentinel engine flags an unsigned beneficiary form, a licensed adviser approves the next step, and the decision is sealed in a hash-chained record that links to the previous entry.

For the founder who also signs the compliance attestation.

Most advisory firms don’t have a compliance department. They have a partner who carries the CCO title on top of a client book. BAFAos is being built for that person.

  • Nothing client-affecting goes out unsigned. Every such decision waits at a gate for a licensed human.
  • Every action leaves a tamper-evident record. Each entry is hash-chained to the one before it, so history can’t be quietly rewritten.
  • Your CCO writes the rules in advance. When findings conflict, the order of precedence is the firm’s, not the software’s.

BAFAos

The chassis

A tamper-evident record underneath everything the platform does.

Underneath BAFAos is a chassis. It is designed to log every action, hold every client-affecting decision for a licensed human, and keep the full history ready for an examiner. Everything else in BAFAos is built on top of it.

  • Hash-chained ledgerDesigned to log every action and link it to the entry before it.
  • Human approval gateEvery client-affecting decision is signed off by a licensed person.
  • Examiner on demandThe full history can be pulled whenever it’s asked for.

Five engines, in development

Each engine is being built on the chassis and is named for the professional whose job it does. None is available to clients yet.

  • Sentinel™

    The detector

    Stands watch over every household. It is being built to run a sealed library of 502 compliance and planning checks against a household’s data and flag what needs attention, such as a drifted allocation, an unsigned beneficiary form or a concentration risk.

  • Actuary™

    Plan math

    The numbers: multi-year projections, Monte Carlo simulation and scenario analysis. Market assumptions are versioned and approved, so any result can be reproduced later.

  • Assessor™

    Tax

    Native tax intelligence. It classifies every tax question into one of five tiers, from handle in-house to refer to a CPA, so the adviser knows what the firm may advise on and what it must refer out.

  • Arbiter™

    Arbitration

    When two findings collide, such as a tax move that hurts the estate plan, Arbiter decides which wins using a fixed order of precedence the firm’s CCO wrote down in advance. Same inputs, same answer, every time. No judgment calls hidden in software.

  • Steward™

    The engagement

    Carries a household through the CFP Board’s seven-step planning process, with a licensed human’s sign-off at each gate and the finished plan sealed in write-once storage.

The rule across all five

  1. The engine computes

    An engine does the analysis: a check, a projection, a tax classification, a precedence decision or a planning step.

  2. A licensed human decides

    Nothing that affects a client moves forward until a licensed person approves it at the gate.

  3. The chain proves it

    The computation, the decision and the approver are sealed in the hash-chained record, ready for an examiner.

Mike McAlpin, CFP®

Mike is a CFP® professional who started his career at Fidelity Investments in Cincinnati, moved to Jacksonville in 2007, and is Managing Partner and Chief Compliance Officer of an SEC-registered investment adviser.

He founded BAFA Labs to build the compliance tools advisory firms need and couldn’t find: software that does the work, leaves the decision to a licensed human and keeps the record an examiner will ask for.

Be first in line for BAFAos.

BAFAos is in development. Request early access and we’ll contact you as it opens to advisory firms.

Request early access