< The 2016 Tech 50

11
Stephen Neff
Enterprise Chief Technology Officer
Fidelity Investments
Last year: 9

With an early-adopting heritage that includes a mainframe computer installation in 1965, an Internet home page in 1995 and today a global technology staff of 10,000 with a budget of $2.5 billion, Fidelity Investments has the organizational DNA and bandwidth to be aggressive in research and development. The R&D engine is a subsidiary, Fidelity Labs, which according to its website has “graduated” such products as Fidelity Watchapp for Pebble and FidSafe for document storage, and is beta-testing Fidelity Market Monitor for Google Glass and data visualizations for limit orders and watch lists. Artificial intelligence, big data, security and open source are key innovation areas, and the mantra is “scan, try, scale,” says Stephen Neff, 64, the Boston-based asset management giant’s enterprise CTO since January 2013. A 20-year Fidelity veteran who previously worked for Salomon Brothers and IBM Corp., Neff says cloud computing, which Fidelity began working with internally about five years ago, is today’s highest-impact technology. “It really allows for major transitions that are going on now in the industry, such as digitalization of human services,” he explains. “Regardless of what channel it comes on — mobile apps or wearables such as Apple Watch — our customers expect that we have total knowledge of their past transactions readily accessible. Cloud, digitalization and personalization are game changers.” Talent being ever more critical to the technology mission, Fidelity’s recruitment program, Leap, now in its seventh year, has broadened to include liberal arts graduates in addition to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) majors. The program has a five-year retention rate of 80 percent. “It’s one of the many ways we’re looking for a diverse workforce that reflects what our customers look like,” Neff says.

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The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 3. Lance Uggla Markit Market Volatility May Boost Distressed Credit Opportunities Sponsored by Fidelity Investments May 12, 2025 4. Phupinder Gill CME Group 5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 6. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group

7. Robert Goldstein BlackRock 8. Adena Friedman Nasdaq 9. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures 10. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings 11. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments 12. David Craig Thomson Reuters

13. Michael Spencer ICAP 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets 17. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 18. David Rutter R3CEV

19. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. 20. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 21. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 22. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings 23. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. 24. Brad Katsuyama IEX Group

25. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 26. David Gledhill DBS Bank 27. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 28. Andreas Preuss Deutsche BÖrse 29. Dan Schulman PayPal Holdings 30. Scott Dillon Wells Fargo & Co.

31. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence 32. Craig Donohue Options Clearing Corp. 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma 36. Michael Cooper BT Radianz

37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 39. David Harding Winton Capital Management 40. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 41. Brian Conlon First Derivatives 42. Jim Minnick eVestment

43. Stephane Dubois Xignite 44. Mazy Dar OpenFin 45. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America 46. Kim Fournais Saxo Bank 47. Jock Percy Perseus 48. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions

49. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software 50. Pieter van der Does Adyen