Writer: Joshua Andino
2 min read February 2023 — Fidelity Investments, the Boston-based firm, is on a hiring spree and expects to add another 620 jobs in the Triangle region in the near-term.
While other firms across the country have started to pursue layoffs, Fidelity, which hired 17,000 new employees across all job functions just last year, continues to double down on the Triangle, hiring a variety of new employees with a focus on technology in particular. The firm’s revenue increased by 5% over 2021, according to the recently released 2022 report, totalling $25.2 billion in revenue and $10.3 trillion in assets under management, which declined 13% from the previous year.
Despite market turmoil, Fidelity is focused on taking advantage of current market conditions, with CEO Abigail Johnson stating in the company’s 2022 Annual Report, “Since Fidelity’s founding, our focus has been on strengthening and securing the financial well-being of our diverse customer base. This means that our operating decisions are based on customer needs rather than short term market trends. Therefore, despite the stock and bond market declines last year, we increased hiring and spending on customer service, technology, and new products. We have followed this contracyclical path multiple times during our long history, because it is during periods of market and economic volatility that we see surges in the number of customers who call, visit our Investor Centers, use one or more of our digital channels, or increase their investing activities with us.”
According to CIODive, 352 of the new employees will be technologists based in Durham, focusing on the increasingly pertinent role of technology’s role in ongoing disruption in financial markets.
“Technology is huge, it is essential and a core piece of our story,” explained Sterling Ingui, regional leader and product area leader for the firm in an earlier interview with Invest:.
The hiring push arrives at a time when firms such as Amazon, Twitter, Microsoft and others have begun reducing headcount and maximizing efficiency as the market continues to slide, driven in part by reduced demand as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates.
Despite the apparent uncertainty, Ingui told Invest: that Fidelity would look to expand services and opportunities for clients. “I would say we’re really looking at how we can continue to bring forward products and services to expand relationships with our existing customers. We want to find ways to connect digitally with that next generation of customers, whether they’re at a different life stage or in a younger demographic. We want to connect with new clients and customers in today’s world and be a digital leader in technologies,” she said.
