The 2014 Tech 50: Stephen Neff

< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

4
Stephen Neff
Enterprise Chief Technology Officer
Fidelity Investments
Last year: 5

Fidelity Investments has $1.9 trillion of assets under management, but the heart of a technology company beats within the firm. Enterprise CTO Stephen Neff manages a $2.5 billion annual budget and chairs a council of 13 chief information officers from the business lines, which in turn are supported by a global technology workforce of 13,000. And yet, Neff says, Fidelity restated its strategy this year to underscore the importance of technology to serving its more than 20 million individual and 5,000 institutional customers. “We want to offer the very best customer experience by providing solutions at scale that are outcome-based rather than product- or security-based, and we want to use technology to advance that vision,” explains the 62-year-old, who joined Boston-based Fidelity in 1996 and has been CTO since January 2013. “The way we deliver experiences is changing,” he adds. “Customers want to view financial solutions in the context of their own personalized world. That means we need to take a holistic view of their relationships and how they engage with technology.” Fidelity developed online and mobile services faster than other companies. Now its Center for Applied Technology is working to get a jump on such emerging trends as wearables (apps for Google Glass and Pebble Watch) and data visualization. A companywide “intrapreneurship” initiative is under way “to source good ideas and get them into a development pipeline,” Neff says.

The 2014 Tech 50

1 Dave Cross	1	3 IAN CURCIO 2011	4 FayFoto/Boston	5 Teri Pengilley
Thomas Secunda Bloomberg	Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange	Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.	Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments	Lance Uggla Markit
6	7	8 Photographer:Charlie Simokaitis	9	10 Mark McQueen
Robert Goldstein BlackRock	David Craig Thomson Reuters	Phupinder Gill CME Group	Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group	R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group
11	12	13	14	15 Christopher Elston
Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures	Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse	Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings	Michael Spencer ICAP	Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
16	17	18 Todd Plitt	19	20
Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets	Dominique Cerutti Euronext	Ron Levi GFI Group	Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group	Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
21 Larry Lettera/ Camera 1	22	23	24 XT	25
Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ	Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets	Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings	Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings	Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group
26 Production	27 Wayne R. Martin	28	29 Thorsten Jansen	30 Adam B. Auel
Christopher Perretta State Street Corp.	Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co.	Peter Carr Morgan Stanley	Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse	Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp.
31	32	33 Paul Elledge	34	35 Stephen Brashear
David Gershon SuperDerivatives	Chris Corrado MSCI	Joseph Squeri Citadel	Tanuja Randery BT Global Services	John Bates Software AG
36	37	38	39 Photo Credit: Kevin Irby	40
Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group	David Gledhill DBS Bank	Simon Garland Kx Systems	Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab	Jeff Parker EidoSearch
41	42 Jeff Smith Photo	43	44	45
Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank	Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates	Tyler Kim MaplesFS	Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp.	Jim Minnick eVestment
46	47	48 tomohisa ichiki	49 David Poultney	50 A.E. Fletcher Photography
Steven O’Hanlon Numerix	Sebastián Ceria Axioma	Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute	Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners	Mas Nakachi OpenGamma