The 2016 Tech 50: Gary Norcross

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Gary Norcross
President and Chief Executive Officer
Fidelity National Information Services
PNR

Fidelity National Information Services, known as FIS, is a globe-spanning financial services technology company with $9.3 billion in revenue, more than 20,000 customers and 55,000 employees. The head count rose by 13,000 last November, when FIS bought SunGard Data Systems from its private equity owners for $9.1 billion and gained a significant securities industry and capital markets presence. “We’re excited about doing much of what we’ve done in retail banking and bringing that into capital markets,” says FIS president and CEO Gary Norcross. “I don’t ever see any downside to breadth.” The SunGard deal brought FIS Marianne Brown, a former CEO of ADP Brokerage Services and posttrade servicer Omgeo, to serve as chief operating officer of institutional and wholesale. M&A is nothing new to Jacksonville, Florida–based FIS, whose strong suits historically were in banking, card and payment systems, outsourcing and consulting. The company traces its roots to Systematics, a Little Rock, Arkansas, data processor founded in 1968 and subsequently known as Alltel Information Services. Norcross, who has a BS in business administration from the University of Arkansas, was president of Alltel’s integrated financial solutions division in 2003, when the company was acquired by title insurer and FIS predecessor Fidelity National Financial. He had a hand in other deals, including the 2006 merger with payments company Certegy and the 2009 acquisition of banking systems provider Metavante Technologies. He rose to COO in 2009, added the president title in 2012 and has been CEO since January 2015. FIS pioneered remote deposit capture — allowing images of checks to be transmitted from hand-held devices — “ten years too early,” Norcross, who turns 51 in July, quips. Current projects include real-time payments — FIS is working with New York’s Clearing House Payments Co. on a pilot scheduled for first-quarter 2017 — and cardless (smartphone-enabled) ATM transactions. Noting that the payments space is crowded with fintech start-ups, Norcross says, “A percentage of these will be successful, and many others will go the way of the dodo bird.”

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The 2016 Tech 50