The 2017 Trading Tech 40: Ronald DePoalo

Peter Vasiliev

March 07, 2017

< Wall Street's Nerds: The World's Most Powerful Trading Executives

11. Ronald DePoalo

Chief Information Officer

Fidelity Institutional

Last year: 8

A $2.1 trillion asset manager with more than 25 million individual customers, Fidelity Investments also has an institutional arm that includes clearing and custody businesses with more than $1.9 trillion in assets under administration, and brokerage and trading services for a wide range of intermediary firms. The entire, global enterprise has benefited from "a long-term commitment to investing in technology and innovation — and we've kept that commitment throughout the recent market cycles," says Ronald DePoalo, chief information officer of Fidelity Institutional. "We are focused on providing the best trading experience for both our retail customers and our institutional clients, and that's been resonating with the adoption we're seeing and the client feedback we're getting," the 52-year-old adds, noting that Fidelity is ranked by Barron's magazine as the best online brokerage — and is No. 1 in price improvement on trades and overall execution quality.

He reports increased adoption of Fidelity Institutional's PB Optimize, recently enhanced with Broker Wallet, which estimates a hedge fund's return on assets with each of its providers. Supporting a "consultative approach" to clients' best execution are EX-RAY for transaction cost analysis in equities; HELM, a suite of trade execution tools and analytics; and posttrade analytics for fixed income.

The 2017 Trading Tech 40