Stephen Bakonyi

About Stephen Bakonyi

Risk and Finance executive with strategic, enterprise, capital, finance, and operational risk expertise along with corporate finance, treasury & controllership. Identifies, assesses, and mitigates key risks across an enterprise. Partner to business leaders, boards of directors, and regulatory agencies. Promotes strong governance, control and risk management in achieving enterprise goals. Implements financial and risk programs against a backdrop of significant organizational change, market volatility, and evolving regulatory landscapes.Champion of people, advocate of diversity and inclusion, and leader who mentors and develops teams to make critical decisions and realize success.Representative accomplishments include: Recruited to Synchrony to build a capital and finance risk management infrastructure from the ground up that supported the spin-off from GE Capital to a standalone company. Built repeatable, sustainable accounting, risk, and control systems at $150B+ organizations. Headed budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis of a $6B revenue business with 100+ retail locations. Led diligence on multiple billion-dollar deals, transactions, and financing structures. Created the strategy to keep pace with heightened regulatory expectations as Synchrony grew to >$100B in assets.

Experience

1. SVP, Capital Planning and Stress Testing

   VyStar Credit Union

   Apr 2025 — Present · Jacksonville, FL, US

   Reporting to CFO with responsibility for assessing and redesigning the capital planning process, including capital adequacy assessments, capital policy, stress testing models, governance structure, and submission of an annual capital plan.

Education

• Boston University

  Bachelor of Business Administration - BBA, Finance

• Xavier University

  Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Business