Ann Fogarty, executive vice president and head of global delivery at State Street, often feels like she needs to be an ambassador for the work of finance operations.
"Over the years — cannot explain why — in our industry the role of operations has become a little bit diminished," said Fogarty, who oversees State Street's operations and its asset servicing portfolio, which has $41.8 trillion in assets under custody and administration.
People will say: "It's the back office," she said, mimicking a dismissive tone. "The depth of complexity of what's needed to happen to make a lot of this tick every day and to produce the outputs, financial reporting, calculations, valuations" is often misunderstood," she said.
Operations work requires technical expertise in regulations and knowledge of a wide range of clients, she said. "Understanding and learning, and being exposed to that, is an enormous opportunity for our staff. And it is what keeps the financial system moving every day."
Fogarty and her team are responsible for custody, reconciliations, derivatives, bank loans, middle-office, investment analytics, accounting and fund administration, alternative operations, and transfer agency activities for State Street. In the wake of two acquisitions of joint ventures in India in August 2023 and April 2024, the bank is well positioned to perfect its operating model and add modern technologies, she said.
"Because we have had such great success in the last couple of years, we are now in a situation where we can actually adopt newer technologies and we can accelerate our change journey," she said. "The mantra internally is: Onward we go."
When Fogarty joined State Street in 2021, she made it a top priority to make sure the company had adequate staffing with the right skills and in the right locations, she said. She also wanted the company to make decisions with a long horizon in mind.
The goal is "not answering the question for today, exclusively, but answering the question for today, for tomorrow, for five years and for ten years, and making sure decisions that we're making are not immediate and not exclusive of what's needed for the next generation," Fogarty said.
She focused on improving the overall skills level of company employees. "That's very important for me, as a leader, to make sure that my team can hopefully understand their value, and the value of tenure and the responsibility we have collectively to honor their ambitions for the future," she said.
But it was also important to bring in new skills from across the market and from college recruiting — especially the digital skills that younger recruits have grown up with, she said.
One of her key leadership responsibilities is to foster an inclusive work culture, Fogarty said. She finds that when people are excluded or feel excluded, they experience a lack of confidence and increased self-doubt.
"If it's not corrected, it can be corrosive and end up where we have people who withdraw from engaging," she said, resulting in the organization missing out on the value of their contributions.
"The other side of it is where people are super included, and with that comes a real sense of team, a real sense of connected ownership, and out of that, deeper and more conviction and ambition to achieve extraordinary outcomes," she said. "That brings great results for our clients, brings tenure and continuity to the staff equation and overall adds good will to the value of the franchise."
