The worst data to put on someone else’s cloud.

Consider what an AMLA file actually contains.

Not marketing data. Not even ordinary client records. An onboarding file under the GwG holds the identity of the beneficial owner behind every structure — the one fact entire industries exist to keep discreet. It holds PEP matches, confirmed or merely suspected. It may hold special clarifications into someone’s source of funds, and in the worst case the working papers of a possible MROS report — material that must, by law, be kept secret from the very client it concerns. There is no more sensitive file in a professional firm.

Now consider where most software wants to put it.

The default architecture of modern SaaS is: your data, on the vendor’s cloud, which is usually a US hyperscaler. Under the US CLOUD Act, a provider subject to US jurisdiction can be compelled to produce data it holds — regardless of where the server physically stands. “Hosted in Zurich” on a US provider’s cloud is a statement about latency, not about jurisdiction. For ordinary business data, that may be a tolerable trade. For beneficial-owner registers and suspicion files, it is not.

Professional duty points the same way.

Swiss intermediaries sit under overlapping confidentiality regimes — professional secrecy for lawyers, the FADP for everyone, and the AMLA’s own strict rules on who may learn what, when. Every additional party with technical access to the file is a party you must justify. The cleanest justification is the one you never have to make: no third party has access, because no third party holds the data.

Self-hosted, concretely.

Portus runs where you decide: on your own servers, with a Swiss hosting provider, or interconnected with your existing infrastructure — e.g. Microsoft Azure under your own encryption keys. The database and storage volumes are the entire data plane; back them up and you hold everything, for the statute’s full ten years. Alplexio has no standing access. Your IT and your auditors can verify that claim, because the source is available for your team to inspect.

Sovereignty without the maintenance tax.

The classic objection to self-hosting is operational burden. It’s a fair objection to self-hosting an email server; it’s a weak one for a system this contained. One application, one database, updates you apply on your schedule — and the alternative is explaining to a client, or a supervisory authority, why a foreign court order reached a file that never needed to leave the building. We chose the burden you can plan for.