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The 2016 Tech 50: Stephen Neff
The Fidelity Investments Enterprise CEO drops to No. 11 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.
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.
Visit The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Faster, Cheaper, Bigger for more.
 1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.  2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange  3. Lance Uggla Markit  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 |