Steward hires Chief Growth Officer, opens doors in Luxembourg 🇱🇺

👋 George Bagkalas, our new Chief Growth Officer

Steward, the AI-first compliance platform purpose-built for complex investor onboarding and ongoing AML/KYC monitoring, today announced the appointment of George Bagkalas as Chief Growth Officer.

The appointment comes at a pivotal stage in Steward’s growth. The company recently raised $5 million in an oversubscribed funding round led by Motive Partners, with participation from Outward VC, Cooley, and leading fintech founders and operators. Steward’s platform is trusted with $100 billion in investor assets and is designed to automate AML/KYC onboarding for complex investor types including funds, trusts, family offices, fund-of-funds and offshore structures. 

As Chief Growth Officer, George will lead Steward’s commercial expansion, strategic partnerships and market development across Europe, US and other key financial centres. He will focus on deepening Steward’s presence across private markets, fund administration, asset management, banking and regulated financial services, where investor onboarding and compliance operations remain highly manual, fragmented and costly.

“Steward was built to solve one of the most persistent operational challenges in financial services: making AML/KYC onboarding faster, smarter and more scalable without compromising regulatory standards,” said Arik Oslerne, co-founder and CEO of Steward. “With George joining as Chief Growth Officer, we are adding a leader who understands both the strategic growth agenda of financial institutions and the operational realities of fund administration, compliance and client service. His experience will be invaluable as we scale Steward globally.”

George brings a strong blend of financial services, fund administration, technology and entrepreneurial experience to Steward. He previously served as Partner at BDO Fund Services, where he led fund administration activities and worked closely with regulated investment structures, alternative investment funds and institutional clients. Prior to that, he was Head of Private Equity at Langham Hall in Luxembourg, overseeing private equity fund administration and supporting cross-border fund structures, investor reporting and operational delivery for international fund managers.

A graduate of the London School of Economics with further executive education at Harvard Business School, George has also co-founded a technology business focused on digital client engagement. He is recognised within Luxembourg and the wider European financial services community for his ability to bridge deep industry expertise with practical, technology-led innovation.

“Investor onboarding has become one of the defining operational bottlenecks in private markets and regulated financial services,” said George, Chief Growth Officer of Steward. “What impressed me about Steward is the clarity of vision set by its co-founders: to build intelligent compliance infrastructure that can understand complex ownership structures, reduce friction for investors and give compliance teams the confidence to scale. Steward is uniquely positioned to become that infrastructure, and I am excited to work with the co-founders and the wider team to bring it to more firms across Europe, US and beyond.”

Steward brings document collection, screening, risk assessment and periodic reviews into a single AI-powered workflow. Its agents are designed to interpret layered ownership and cross-border structures, while its shareable Investor Profiles allow firms to exchange AML/KYC data securely with counterparties. Steward’s platform enables same-day onboarding in 80% of cases, regardless of investor complexity. 

Steward serves regulated firms including private markets funds, banks, brokers and UCITS managers, with notable users including Motive Partners, Connect Ventures, Left Lane, Unruly Capital, Outward VC and several Tier 1 institutional allocators. 

About Steward

Steward is an AI-first AML compliance platform purpose-built for complex investor onboarding and ongoing monitoring. The platform automates AML/KYC workflows for sophisticated investor types, including funds, trusts, family offices, fund-of-funds and offshore structures. Steward unifies document collection, screening, risk assessment and periodic reviews into a single workflow, helping regulated firms accelerate onboarding, reduce manual remediation and improve investor experience. Steward is dual headquartered in New York and London.

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