Before you evaluate AI platforms, before you compare features, before you negotiate pricing—there's one architectural decision that will determine whether your AI initiative succeeds or becomes a compliance nightmare:
Do you control the AI model, or does your vendor?
This single question has massive implications for data sovereignty, compliance, cost predictability, and strategic flexibility. Yet many financial services firms don't ask it—they get distracted by feature comparisons while missing the fundamental architectural difference that matters most.
GPTfy is the only fixed-price Salesforce AI agent platform on AppExchange offering true BYOM architecture. At Vantage Point, we've evaluated dozens of AI platforms for our wealth management, banking, and insurance clients. This article provides the comprehensive comparison you need to make the right architectural choice for your firm.
In a proprietary model, the AI vendor hosts everything. Your data travels to their cloud for processing through a multi-tenant shared infrastructure. When your Salesforce instance makes an API call, that data moves to the vendor's servers where their AI model processes it before sending back a response.
With GPTfy, you control the AI model. Your data stays in your environment. When your Salesforce instance (with GPTfy installed) makes an API call, it connects to your Azure, AWS, or GCP instance where your chosen AI model processes the request. Your security controls remain in place, and you maintain complete control.
GPTfy's BYOM implementation is straightforward:
No complex middleware. No data replication. No third-party processing. GPTfy orchestrates the interaction while your data stays in your controlled environment.
GPTfy supports all major LLM providers:
OpenAI: GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-3.5
Anthropic: Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3 Sonnet, Claude 2
Google: Gemini Pro, Vertex AI
Azure OpenAI: All Azure-hosted OpenAI models
DeepSeek: DeepSeek models
Perplexity: Perplexity models
Open Source: Llama and other self-hosted models
Proprietary platforms store your data in the vendor's cloud, subject to their policies and deletion timelines. You're dependent on their infrastructure and compliance with data residency requirements.
GPTfy BYOM keeps your data in your cloud, under your policies, with complete control over location and deletion. GPTfy's architecture ensures zero persistent data retention—information flows through the AI process but remains within your security perimeter.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
When client data leaves your environment, you lose control. GPTfy's architecture maintains your data sovereignty throughout the entire AI workflow.
Financial services firms face intense regulatory scrutiny. FINRA Rule 3110 requires supervisory systems for all technology use. For AI, this means understanding what the system does, controlling data access, maintaining records, and ensuring compliance.
With proprietary platforms, you're explaining someone else's black box to FINRA examiners. With GPTfy BYOM, you're demonstrating your own controlled systems operating in your own environment. GPTfy provides SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR compliance, and is FINRA-ready with comprehensive audit trails built into Salesforce.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
Clear demonstration of control and direct compliance beats third-party risk management every time.
Here's where GPTfy truly differentiates itself. While proprietary platforms typically use consumption-based pricing that can exceed estimates by 2-3x, GPTfy offers fixed per-user pricing at $20-$50/month.
Real Cost Comparison over 3 Years:
GPTfy (Fixed): $189,000 total
Consumption-Based Alternative: $308,000 total
GPTfy's fixed pricing delivers 38% savings while eliminating budget uncertainty. As the only fixed-price Salesforce AI agent platform on AppExchange, CFOs can budget with complete confidence.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
AI models are improving rapidly. Do you want to be locked into one vendor's roadmap?
Proprietary platforms restrict you to their model only. They decide when upgrades happen, fine-tuning is limited or unavailable, and you're locked to their innovation timeline.
GPTfy BYOM lets you choose any LLM—OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Llama, and more. You decide when to upgrade, you control fine-tuning, and you remain open to market innovation. Most importantly, you can switch models without rebuilding your entire AI infrastructure. Your prompts, workflows, and configurations remain intact.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
During market volatility, your advisors need AI support most—exactly when everyone else does too.
With proprietary platforms, you're sharing infrastructure with other customers, subject to vendor capacity constraints, and receiving the same priority as every other customer.
With GPTfy BYOM, you have dedicated or scaled infrastructure serving only you, with controllable latency and SLAs based on your cloud provider plus your requirements.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
What happens if your AI vendor raises prices or degrades service?
With proprietary platforms, switching costs are high because you have to rebuild everything. You have complete vendor dependency and a weak negotiating position.
With GPTfy BYOM, you can switch AI models while keeping your GPTfy workflows intact. The models are interchangeable, giving you a strong negotiating position and straightforward exit strategy.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
Proprietary platforms implement security controls on your behalf. You must request their penetration testing reports, follow their security update timeline, and rely on their incident response procedures.
GPTfy BYOM operates within your existing security controls while adding its own protections like PII Masking. You can conduct your own penetration testing, control your security update timeline, and manage incident response directly. GPTfy maintains SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR certifications while leveraging your zero-trust architecture.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
Generic solutions require workarounds. Industry-specific solutions drive results.
Proprietary platforms limit prompt engineering to their interface, constrain integration to their APIs, and offer generic or limited industry-specific capabilities.
GPTfy BYOM provides full control via Prompt Builder, complete Salesforce integration plus custom options via Flow and Apex, unlimited workflow complexity with GPTfy Agents, and fully customizable configurations for wealth management, banking, and insurance use cases.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
When we model TCO for our clients, GPTfy BYOM almost always comes out ahead over 3 years. The apparent simplicity of proprietary pricing hides consumption growth that compounds over time.
While proprietary platforms may show lower implementation costs initially, their variable consumption-based pricing grows 40-60% annually as usage increases. GPTfy's fixed per-user cost plus visible infrastructure costs create predictable, often lower TCO.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy typically wins over 3 years
AI will be central to financial services for decades. Which architecture positions you for long-term success?
Proprietary platforms build minimal internal AI expertise, provide the same capabilities as every other vendor customer, tie your future capability to the vendor's roadmap, and create zero exit value.
GPTfy BYOM builds significant internal AI capability, enables competitive advantages unique to your firm, puts you in control of your future capabilities, and retains the value of your investment even if you change providers.
Winner for Financial Services: GPTfy BYOM
FINRA Rule 3110 requires firms to establish supervisory systems for all technology use. For AI systems, you must demonstrate:
With proprietary AI, you're explaining someone else's black box. With GPTfy BYOM, you're demonstrating your own controlled systems.
When you accept responsibility for client assets and information, you assume fiduciary duty. This duty extends to how you handle data in all systems—including AI.
Can you fulfill fiduciary duty by sending client data to a third party whose security practices you can't fully verify, whose employees you didn't vet, and whose policies can change without your consent?
GPTfy BYOM eliminates this concern by keeping fiduciary data in your controlled environment.
Board members and risk committees increasingly ask:
"What happens if the AI vendor has a data breach?"
GPTfy: Your data never leaves your environment
"What if they change their terms of service?"
GPTfy: Your models, your terms
"What if they're acquired by a competitor?"
GPTfy: Platform is Salesforce-native; models are yours
"What if they go out of business?"
GPTfy: Your workflows continue on alternate models
This objection assumes you're setting up AI infrastructure from scratch. In reality, cloud providers offer turnkey AI deployments, GPTfy handles orchestration complexity, Vantage Point manages setup and configuration, and your team manages business configuration via no-code Prompt Builder—not infrastructure.
Complexity is a one-time implementation challenge, not an ongoing burden. GPTfy positioning: go-live in weeks, not months.
Feature comparisons often favor proprietary platforms initially, but GPTfy capabilities are comprehensive: Agents, Voice, RAG, Prompt Builder, and PII Masking. More importantly, features built on proprietary architecture have fundamental limitations. The feature that matters most—data control—is BYOM-only.
You don't need it. Vantage Point sets up your BYOM cloud environment, AI model deployment is increasingly turnkey, ongoing management is minimal after initial configuration, and cloud providers offer managed services that reduce operational burden.
Include these factors in your analysis: proprietary consumption growth (typically 40-60% annually), risk costs (potential breach impact), switching costs (vendor change expenses), and opportunity costs (vendor lock-in value). On full TCO analysis, GPTfy BYOM typically wins within 18-24 months.
GPTfy provides centralized usage analytics across all connected BYOM models:
This visibility is critical for multi-model BYOM deployments—something proprietary vendors don't provide since you're locked to their single model.
The architecture choice is more important than the feature list. Data sovereignty, compliance capability, and cost predictability all flow from whether you control the AI model.
Proprietary AI creates unacceptable compliance risks. When client data leaves your environment, you're relying on vendor security and hoping regulators accept your vendor oversight documentation.
GPTfy BYOM provides complete data sovereignty. Your data, your cloud, your control—satisfying fiduciary duty and regulatory requirements by design.
GPTfy is the only fixed-price Salesforce AI agent platform on AppExchange. At $20-$50/user/month with no consumption overages, CFOs can budget with certainty.
Model flexibility protects your investment. GPTfy supports OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Llama, and more—switch models without rebuilding workflows.
Strategic advantage comes from control. Firms that control their AI infrastructure can customize, optimize, and differentiate in ways proprietary users cannot.
The proprietary vs. BYOM decision isn't just technical—it's strategic. It determines whether your AI implementation will be compliant or risky, predictable or expensive, flexible or locked-in.
For financial services firms with fiduciary responsibilities and regulatory obligations, GPTfy BYOM isn't just preferred—it's often the only defensible choice. The combination of data sovereignty, compliance capability, cost predictability, and strategic flexibility makes GPTfy BYOM the clear winner across all dimensions that matter.
The good news: GPTfy BYOM is no longer complex or expensive. GPTfy's platform and Vantage Point's implementation expertise have made enterprise-grade BYOM accessible to mid-market financial services firms. The barriers that once made proprietary platforms attractive have largely disappeared.
Vantage Point is a specialized Salesforce and HubSpot consultancy serving the financial services industry. We help wealth management firms, banks, credit unions, insurance providers, and fintech companies transform their client relationships through intelligent CRM implementations. Our team of 100% senior-level, certified professionals combines deep financial services expertise with technical excellence to deliver solutions that drive measurable results.
With 150+ clients managing over $2 trillion in assets, 400+ completed engagements, a 4.71/5 client satisfaction rating, and 95%+ client retention, we've earned the trust of financial services firms nationwide.
David Cockrum, Founder & CEO
David founded Vantage Point after serving as COO in the financial services industry and spending 13+ years as a Salesforce user. This insider perspective informs our approach to every engagement—we understand your challenges because we've lived them. David leads Vantage Point's mission to bridge the gap between powerful CRM platforms and the specific needs of financial services organizations.