If Done Right
The AI Governance Framework for Regulated Financial Firms
If Done Right is the field guide to governing AI inside SEC-registered firms, by Brandon Veldman, CFA and Stefan Whitwell, CFA, CIPM. Written for the compliance officer who carries the risk, and the owner who controls the levers, it turns AI from an unmanaged exposure into a defensible, faster, more competitive practice. It is the clearest proof of how Chaos Holdings thinks.
The AI Governance Framework for Regulated Financial Firms
A field guide, not a manifesto.
It answers one hard question in one hard domain: how does a regulated financial firm put AI to work without creating an exposure it cannot defend? The book is deliberately narrow. It is written for two readers who sit on opposite sides of the same decision, and it gives each of them language the other will recognize.
The Chief Compliance Officer who carries the risk
The person who has to answer for what the firm actually does with AI. The book gives the CCO a defensible standard: how to see the tools in use, set guardrails that hold, and build an audit file that survives scrutiny instead of inviting it.
The firm owner who controls the levers
There is a dedicated growth case here for owners. Done right, governance is not a brake on the business. It is what lets a firm move faster with confidence, protect margin, and keep the talent that expects to work with modern tools.
Six moves, one throughline: govern first, then accelerate.
Here is the arc of the argument, not the contents. The book earns each step in full; this is enough to see where it goes and why the order matters.
The human reality of the moment
The pressure people actually feel when a new tool lands faster than any policy can keep up with it.
The explosion of AI tools
Why the surface area of risk keeps expanding, and why waiting it out is not a strategy.
Where governance breaks
The seams where good intentions quietly fail, long before anyone files a report.
The core principles of doing AI right
The standard the whole book turns on, stated plainly enough to hold up under examination.
The owner's case
Governance framed as growth, margin, and talent, not only as a compliance obligation.
Application
What a defensible process actually looks like in the weeks you are having, not the ones your manual assumes.
We chose the hardest room in the building.
We could have proven the method somewhere forgiving. Instead we wrote it for SEC-registered financial services, where an examiner can ask to see your work and a wrong answer carries real consequences. If the framework holds under that scrutiny, it holds for your board and your operation.
The book is narrow by design. The thinking behind it is not. This is how Chaos Holdings approaches AI everywhere we work, in the boardroom and on the shop floor: govern first, then move fast. AI, done right. The book is simply the clearest place to watch us do it.
Two CFA charterholders. One standard.
Brandon Veldman, CFA
Brandon leads Chaos Holdings in building AI and automation systems for growing firms. He previously held a lead role at Palantir commercializing its AI technology, and traded on Wall Street. He earned his CFA Charter in 2017 and is a graduate of Columbia University.
Stefan Whitwell, CFA, CIPM
Stefan is an entrepreneur and founder whose career spans more than three decades across Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse First Boston, and firms of his own. He founded Whitwell & Co., a nationwide SEC-registered investment advisory firm, and co-founded Chaos Holdings to help American businesses adopt AI responsibly. He is a graduate of The Wharton School.
Read the book. Then bring us the hard question.
Start with the framework that had to hold under an examiner. Then see where your own organization stands.