Stewards Inc. Taps AI to Reshape Private Credit Underwriting

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – March 17, 2026 – Stewards Inc., a diversified financial company, announced today a strategic partnership to deploy a sophisticated artificial intelligence infrastructure, signaling a significant technological leap in the private credit market. The company has selected AI developer Overnight Engine to integrate a workflow-specific AI system across its underwriting and credit operations, a move designed to enhance efficiency and scale while deliberately keeping human experts at the helm of final decision-making.

The initiative represents a critical step in Stewards' strategy to address the burgeoning demand for capital among small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), a segment often underserved by traditional banking institutions. By automating complex, document-heavy processes, the company aims to accelerate its lending capabilities without sacrificing the disciplined credit standards it emphasizes.

A Strategic Push for Intelligent Lending

This partnership is not a mere technology upgrade; it is a cornerstone of Stewards' broader growth strategy. The private credit market is experiencing explosive growth, with projections suggesting it will surpass $1.5 trillion by 2025. Stewards Inc. (OTC: SWRD) is positioning itself to capture a significant share of this market by blending financial expertise with purpose-built technology.

Since 2020, the company has deployed over $150 million in capital and is making substantial investments in its physical and technological infrastructure, including a new 130,000-square-foot corporate headquarters in Florida and preparations for a potential Nasdaq uplisting. The integration of AI is central to this scaling effort. The goal is to increase underwriting throughput and serve more SMBs without a proportional increase in headcount, thereby creating a more efficient and scalable operational model.

“Building scalable infrastructure around underwriting and credit operations is a priority for us as the platform grows,” said Vaughan Korte, Chief Operating Officer of Stewards Inc., in the company's press release. “This initiative is about equipping our team with better tools to evaluate opportunities efficiently while maintaining the disciplined credit standards that define our platform.”

Beyond Chatbots: A New Breed of 'Private AI'

At the heart of the collaboration is Overnight Engine’s specialized technology, which stands in contrast to the generic, consumer-facing AI tools that have dominated headlines. The system is described as “private AI infrastructure” that operates directly inside Stewards’ critical workflows, rather than as a separate, general-purpose assistant.

This bespoke system is designed to handle the intricate mechanics of credit underwriting. Its functions include automating the intake of complex financial documents, extracting and structuring key data points, executing predefined workflow checks based on Stewards' underwriting logic, and generating auditable, evidence-backed outputs for review. A key differentiator is its ability to learn and improve over time. Because the system is deployed privately within Stewards' environment, it can ingest operational data and adapt based on reviewer feedback and company-specific context, becoming increasingly aligned with Stewards’ unique underwriting patterns and edge cases.

“Most AI tools today are generic chatbot assistants,” explained Ak Tyagi, CEO of Overnight Engine. “We’re building something fundamentally different: private AI infrastructure that operates directly inside critical workflows—where decisions must be evidence-backed, auditable, and ultimately controlled by humans.” This approach aims to create a more powerful and tailored capability than what could be achieved with off-the-shelf AI solutions.

Balancing Automation with Human Oversight

Despite the advanced automation, both companies have stressed that the system is designed to augment, not replace, human expertise. The model is a clear example of a “human-in-the-loop” framework, a best practice for deploying AI in high-stakes fields like finance. The AI will handle the laborious data processing, but the final credit decisions will remain firmly in the hands of Stewards’ professional underwriting team.

The system is engineered to route exception cases and complex scenarios to human experts, ensuring that nuanced judgment and contextual understanding are applied where they are most needed. This preserves the critical element of human accountability and provides a safeguard against the potential pitfalls of full automation. This structure also creates a vital feedback loop, where human underwriters can correct or refine the AI's work, contributing to the system's continuous improvement while ensuring that the final credit judgments are sound, ethical, and compliant.

Navigating a New Regulatory and Competitive Frontier

Stewards' initiative comes as the financial industry grapples with the transformative potential and inherent risks of artificial intelligence. While competitors like Upstart and Zest AI have already made significant inroads using machine learning for credit scoring, Stewards' focus on a workflow-integrated, private AI for the complexities of private credit represents a distinct strategic path.

This approach also appears tailored to navigate the increasingly scrutinized regulatory landscape. U.S. regulatory bodies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) have issued clear guidance demanding transparency and fairness in AI-driven lending. Regulators are particularly concerned with “black box” models where the reasoning behind a decision is unclear. By focusing on a system that generates “evidence-backed outputs” and is designed to be “audit-friendly,” Stewards is proactively addressing these concerns.

The emphasis on maintaining human oversight is not just an ethical choice but a pragmatic one, aligning the company with regulatory expectations that ultimate accountability for lending decisions rests with the institution, not the algorithm. As the industry continues to evolve, this combination of technological efficiency and robust human governance could set a new standard for responsible innovation in the private credit sector, ultimately expanding access to capital for businesses that form the backbone of the economy.