Head of strategy and research, Impact Labs
Amy Gentile is part of FIS' periscope, tasked with leading an innovation machine that anticipates and responds to market needs ahead of time — before a sea of aggressive and well-funded fintechs snatch the opportunity away.
Gentile is one of the co-founders of Impact Labs, which grew out of a white paper she wrote in late 2019 with three other colleagues, believing the firm needed a corporate innovation function to allow the massive FIS to streamline projects.
That caught the attention of CEO Gary Norcross, who endorsed the white paper. The lab launched in spring 2020 and hit the ground running, covering three business segments: capital markets, banking and merchant solutions. "We did research on corporate initiatives, we did our diligence and worked to make a case founded on data," Gentile said.
As part of the lab's leadership team, Gentile has grown the Lab's staff from 4 to 46 and has hired her own team of 8 staffers, on the way to 11. She also designed elements of FIS' innovation process and established a pipeline of 150 concepts, with three new ventures set to launch in 2021.
Because of the pandemic, a lot of this work has been done without the close in-person collaboration that has long accompanied innovation. Even the path to new technology had to be invented to fit a new need.
"I had to recruit, onboard, train and begin managing a brand new team in a fully remote work environment," Gentile said. "Further, we rely on a high degree of collaboration in our day-to-day work, with design thinking and ideation sessions core to our innovation process."
The team has worked through virtual collaboration, frequent one-on-ones, and small group lunches to stay connected.
Amy Gentile has displayed incredible leadership skills and has spearheaded numerous innovations and initiatives since I have had the pleasure of working with her.
"In a short amount of time, with very few of us having ever met in person, we’ve learned to rely on each other to achieve the aggressive goals ahead," Gentile said.
FIS Impact Labs is a key part of FIS strategy to compete in a market that includes an increasing number of well-capitalized fintechs like Stripe, Square and PayPal, which have been targeting traditional merchant acquirers and payment processors with easy-to-deploy digital transaction rails. FIS also faces traditional rivals like Fiserv, a firm that's gotten much larger over the past two years as a result of its acquisition of First Data. FIS made a similar deal before the pandemic, acquiring
A large part of Gentile's role is to pursue the highest opportunity concepts based on revenue and market position. That means generating the numbers and analysis to make vital investment decisions across different parts of the industry and different stages of a project.
"This allows us to really capitalize on emerging trends," Gentile said, referencing the competition FIS is in with fintechs that have drawn billions in VC investments over the past couple of years. Impact Labs is designed to bring a dash of a fintech startup to one of the financial technology industry's most established companies. "We have an opportunity to push the envelope."
While Gentile's work has been largely done under the stress of remote work and pandemic-era workarounds, she has noticed the larger struggles of working women during the pandemic. Gentile references a McKinsey survey that reports one in four women were considering downshifting or leaving their careers altogether in 2020. Addressing the gender gap in work, career development and in pandemic response means incentivising senior executives to focus on inequities, according to Gentile.
"The one tangible action, which I believe can reverse some of the effects of the pandemic and drive real change for gender and racial parity, is tying executives’ pay to the extent to which they are able to build diverse and inclusive teams," Gentile said.
Nominating executive:
Steven Walcheck
Chief Innovation Officer
What he says:
"Amy Gentile has displayed incredible leadership skills and has spearheaded numerous innovations and initiatives since I have had the pleasure of working with her."
