by Karen Brune Mathis
Managing Editor
Frank Martire came to town in October 2009 when Jacksonville-based FIS acquired Milwaukee-based Metavante Corp.
As president and CEO of FIS, which also is referred to as Fidelity National Information Services, Martire directs a global company that has grown to more than $5 billion in global revenues, 14,000 clients in more than 100 countries and more than 30,000 employees in 27 countries.
In a recent presentation to the Association for Corporate Growth North Florida chapter, Martire said the company followed some simple guidelines.
“You have to make the right investments and you have to make the right commitment and stick to it,” Martire told the group of financial and legal executives.
“You can’t be everything to everybody. You have to be clear and focused about where you want to be, and why,” he said.
FIS is a separate company from Fidelity National Financial Inc. but has offices in the same complex along Riverside Avenue. Also, Bill Foley is a chair of both companies.
FIS provides technology and services to the financial services industry worldwide. Customers include community, mid-tier and large banks, credit unions, international banks and other customers, such as government, health care and educational systems.
FIS continues to add staff at its Jacksonville headquarters and anticipates growth at its other five major campuses in the United States: Maitland, St. Petersburg, Norcross, Ga., Little Rock and Milwaukee.
Martire is circulating more within the community now that he has been at the helm of FIS for 14 months. He was CEO of Metavante since 2003.
Martire was born and grew up in Connecticut and has lived and worked throughout the Midwest, except for a little over a year in Boca Raton. He and his wife live in Ponte Vedra Beach and they have three adult children who live in the Northeast.
He was interviewed Thursday in his office.
How do you like Jacksonville?
I like it. I was going to say that the weather’s just great, except it’s cold. It’s a nice community. It’s worked out well. I’m starting to get involved in the community. I decided to wait one year because we had to focus on a lot, not the least of which was the integration of the two companies and putting the culture together. I recently joined the Baptist Health board and (Jacksonville Regional) Chamber (of Commerce) board. Those will be my first two initiatives in the community.
I love being part of the community and being involved in making a difference. It’s a little bit easier on me than the rest of our employees, because I drag them all in to help me. They do all the work.
They just had the Diabetes Walk Nov. 6 and raised $39,000 in that one day. We’re really proud of that. We had 152 registered.
What have been your accomplishments and your goals?
My goal is pretty straightforward. We had to do some things from a cost standpoint, but that was secondary to putting the culture together as one from both the companies, FIS’ organization and Metavante. We put a very strong leadership team in place, and it was a nice blend between FIS and Metavante, but it wasn’t intentional. We didn’t say, ‘you had to have five from one and five from the other, or four and six’ or whatever. It was, ‘who’s the best person for the particular job?’ and that’s what we did. I think we made the right decision. I think that was key, because you need the right leadership.
I think for the most part, our clients have been very satisfied with the results. And we’re selling. We’re growing the business at the same time that we put the two companies together.
What were some of the differences in the cultures?
I don’t know if they’re that different, it’s just that everybody just acted their own way, and had certain priorities in the way they did things. FIS had a very strong culture, so did Metavante. I would say the challenge we had was if there were pockets in either company (where) we felt the culture wasn’t as strong as it needed to be, we went about fixing it. They were both strong cultures. Wherever we had pockets of issues, we fixed it. And by the way, it’s not there yet. It’s not perfect. We recognized it, we accept it, and then we go fix it.
You spoke about leadership at the Association for Corporate Growth. In this economy, is leadership even more important?
My first answer would be leadership’s always important. You have to be determined. If your clients are important to you, then the most important thing is you take care of your clients. You don’t say, ‘I need to short-cut that because I have to find a way to survive, or to cut costs.’
Our commitment to our employees from a development standpoint, and even from a compensation standpoint, you (also) have to keep that focus, even in difficult times. You have to keep your talented employees and you have to motivate, and you have to incent, and most important, you have to communicate with them. So maybe it becomes a little bit more demanding on the leadership side to communicate more, to make sure you’re effective and keep the talent you have and keep the clients you have.
How much tougher is it during an economy like this?
I think it’s more difficult in the sense of uncertainty. We went through a difficult time. Nothing was expected to be that difficult. You have to work through it. It takes a little bit more effort to work through what we had, especially with the uncertainty of not knowing if it was going to improve within one month or one year or two years or three years. I think that was the most difficult task.
Is the economy improving?
Yes, the economy’s improving. I think there’s more spending. We were just in New York, and clearly if you want to take New York as one example, there were a lot more people shopping. There were a lot more people in restaurants than there were a year ago, and certainly two years ago. You could see that the real estate market, though, at the same time is still depressed. Unemployment is still way too high. The gauge of unemployment is still a disappointment. Do I think we’re recovering? Yes, I think it’s a slow recovery. I think it’s still going to take some time. There was never going to be an immediate fix, an overnight fix. I’m not sure if it gets right back to where it was, or should it, but it’s going to be a slow process.
How is the global economy affecting your business?
It’s pockets. If you look at Brazil right now, we do very well there, because the economy in South America, Brazil particularly, has done well. Europe has been fine, though, it’s been somewhat of a recovery. I’d say right now, globally, we’re doing OK.
A little bit shy of a $1 billion of our $5 billion business is offshore, so it’s something around less than 20 percent. But it’s in different regions, too, that’s the most important point. You look for areas where you hope two, three to four regions are doing well, if one of them is falling down a little bit. We are in all the different regions in the world.
The Canadian market is doing very well. I was up in Toronto. It’s growing. The banks in Toronto are doing very well compared to the ones in the United States (that) have struggled.
When people ask what does FIS do, what do you say?
It’s always hard to answer that because we do so many things. We do financial servicing. We have technology services that we supply to financial institutions. The ones that you could relate to mostly, such as when you do your Internet banking, or when you’re doing your bill payment, or using a debit card, or a credit card, or an ATM transaction, we supply all those capabilities to our banks.
Then your normal deposit accounts, your CD accounts, commercial loans, we provide all those capabilities. When you go to a teller window, and see all the screens they bring up, those are capabilities we supply to our clients. We’re full service. We look to give the full solution to our customers, mostly banks but not only banks. We do retail business and we certainly do some credit unions, but we give financial servicing capabilities.
How large is FIS in terms of employees?
(We have) 31,000, almost 50-50 in the States and outside, in terms of here and offshore. We have 15,000 in the States and 16,000 offshore.
And how many in Jacksonville?
About 560 people in the greater Jacksonville area.
How do you communicate with your 31,000 employees?
It’s interesting. We have about four or five sites in the States that cover around 65 percent to 70 percent of our employees. If we go to Milwaukee, we could get in front of 3,000 employees. If we go to St. Pete, to Maitland, we get in front of a couple of thousand more. If we go to Little Rock, another thousand. So we could go to four or five sites and get in front of 7,000 or 8,000 of our 15,000 domestic employees. We could go to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and India, one or two sites there, and get in front of 10,000 to 12,000 of the 15,000-16,000 offshore. Going to seven or eight sites, you can get in front of 70 percent of our employees, and that’s without the audiovisual we do.
We go visit as often as we can. We think it’s crucial, and that’s the entire leadership team. It’s a mandate. If you’re part of the leadership team, you’re out there with the employees and with the clients as often as possible.
It works for us. It works for our clients. It works for our employees.
What were the employment levels at each separate company?
Oh, a big difference. Metavante had about 6,000 employees. And so there were about 24,000 at the time at FIS. Keep in mind that FIS had about 15,000 offshore. And Metavante had a couple hundred people, if that.
How many clients do you have?
We have about 14,000 that have at least one of the FIS products.
What are your goals this year?
Continue to grow our organic growth both in the States and offshore. So global growth and to continue to grow our large bank presence.
What are your personal goals in Jacksonville for your second year here?
To get to know more people. I did not get to know a lot of people the first year, which was a combination of being new to the community, traveling a lot and working quite a bit on the integration of the two companies. So, more and more focus on getting to know more people in the community and having our entire organization involved and engaged in the community.
Do you make a lot of presentations?
About three so far. We’ll do a few more this year, but I don’t try to do too many. I’ve got to balance work. We’ll do three or four formal presentations a year, but we’ll go to a lot of luncheons and community things.
What’s your prediction for the economy?
I think the recovery happens slowly, but we will recover. I have a lot of faith in the United States and what we are as a country. It’s going to take a lot of work. And there’s no easy fix.
But there is a fix?
There is. We had a really bad crisis. It was pretty desperate for a while. If you look at it today, I don’t think anybody feels that desperate any more.
But I think we’re on the right track. We’ve just got to hope it continues.
What changes do you see in the banking industry in another 10 years?
I’m not sure I know that answer, but when you start talking about the next generation, and the current generation, there’s no question about it. They don’t necessarily want to go into a branch of a bank. They want to have those capabilities either on a computer or on a phone or some device, iPad or whatever, to do their banking or do the buying of goods and services.
I think we’re going to see more and more of that. More and more people will be looking for capabilities to be right there at their fingertips. For this generation, kids 5, 10, 15 years old, they’re growing up using computers. That’s a way of life. That’s it. That’s what they do. And they’re not intimidated by it. That’s the key. They’re not intimidated by it whatsoever. And they’re fast learners.
How do you and your industry anticipate keeping ahead of the curve?
It’s the technology. We have to continue to invest, and the key is not just to invest in one product, because you can’t pretend that you know the one solution that everybody’s going to use. For instance, we didn’t just invest in ATMs, or just in bill payment, or just in debit cards, or just in credit cards. We did them all because we didn’t know what consumers were really going to want. You really have to have mobile phones and mobile payments as we do right now. You have to invest in multiple products, and I think mobile’s the big one right now.
What other predictions do you have?
Technology will continue to advance and we have to be ready for it. I think we see that in all industries and businesses. I think that will just continue.
How expensive is it to maintain older customers?
It’s expensive, but by the same token, they have some of the larger balances.
(Banks) do that analysis all the time. I think the capabilities will always be there to go to a branch. If you go to a branch, or the main office, obviously you’ll get what you need without having to go through a lot of technology. I don’t think tellers are going away any time soon. Banks talked about that before, trying not to have the teller line, and everybody has to do it automated. That has not taken hold. There are still tellers. There are a lot of people, even at a lot of different ages, who want to talk to a person. They still want to have the personal touch.
You must have a lot of fun getting up every day and just doing what you do.
I enjoy it, because I get to be with the employees and I get to be with the clients, and I travel. Any time I can have out with the clients and the employees, I enjoy the most. That’s the best part of my job.
Do you work long hours?
It goes in spurts. There are long days. They say every day must be great, and every day’s not great. There are challenges, some days are tougher than others, but do I like what I’m doing? Yeah, I love what I’m doing. I have a passion for what I do. They were talking a lot about (former University of Florida coach) Urban Meyer, and stepping down, and all the coaches and a lot of them talking about when was the right time to step down, and so many of them said the exact same thing. When they don’t enjoy coming to work is when most of them step down. But as long as they enjoy it, and have a passion for it, and obviously love their job, that’s a great feeling.