Gary Norcross

Former Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer FIS (Fidelity National Information Services)

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Gary Norcross had one of the rarer careers in American corporate life: he joined Systematics, Inc. as an entry-level programmer in 1988 and, thirty-four years later, left the same organisation — by then FIS, one of the world’s largest financial technology companies — as its Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. He became president and chief operating officer in 2012, chief executive in 2015, and added the chairmanship in 2018, running a business that grew to more than 55,000 employees serving over 20,000 clients in more than 130 countries. His tenure was defined by acquisition: Certegy, eFunds, Metavante Technologies and SunGard over the years, and in 2019 Worldpay, a deal valued at roughly $43bn including assumed debt and among the largest in the history of the payments industry. He left in December 2022, earlier than the announced transition plan and without taking the executive chairman role he had been designated for, as FIS entered a difficult period. He remains an independent director of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America and is active in education and youth causes in Jacksonville.

Career Highlights

• Led FIS through the 2019 acquisition of Worldpay, valued at roughly $43bn including assumed debt.
• Directed a succession of major acquisitions across his FIS career, including Certegy, eFunds, Metavante Technologies, SunGard and Worldpay.
• Grew FIS to more than 55,000 employees serving over 20,000 clients in more than 130 countries, roughly doubling revenue during his time as chief executive.
• Rose from entry-level programmer in 1988 to Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the same organisation’s successor company.
• Named one of the Jacksonville Business Journal’s Ultimate CEOs in 2018.
• Received Phi Delta Theta’s Nance-Millett Free Enterprise Award in 2024.
• Has served as an independent director of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America since 2017.

Professional Journey

Norcross joined Systematics, Inc. in Little Rock in 1988 as an entry-level programmer, straight out of the University of Arkansas. Systematics provided core processing software to banks — the unglamorous back-end systems that actually move money and maintain accounts — and it changed hands and names repeatedly over the following two decades, becoming Alltel Information Services and eventually part of Fidelity National Information Services. Norcross stayed through all of it, moving up through technical, product and general management roles. He served as senior vice president and general manager of the community bank division at Alltel Information Services, and as president of Aurum Technology, accumulating the operating experience across bank segments that would later define his strategy.

He was appointed president and chief operating officer of FIS in 2012, chief executive officer in 2015, and chairman as well in 2018. The strategy he pursued was consolidation. Financial institutions buy technology in long cycles and rarely change providers, which makes scale and breadth of product the decisive competitive assets; FIS accordingly grew by acquiring the companies that held the other pieces. Certegy, eFunds, Metavante Technologies and SunGard came in over the years, building out payments, risk and capital-markets capability alongside the core banking business.

The defining transaction came in 2019 with Worldpay, a global ecommerce and payment technology company, in a deal valued at roughly $43bn including assumed debt. It was one of the largest acquisitions the payments industry had seen, and it moved FIS decisively out of pure bank technology and into merchant acquiring — the other side of the card transaction. Integrating it was the central project of Norcross’s later tenure, alongside investment in cloud infrastructure, digital banking platforms and real-time payments.

The end was abrupt. In October 2022 FIS announced that Stephanie Ferris would become president and chief executive on 1 January 2023, and that Norcross would move to executive chairman. Instead he left the company on 16 December 2022, ahead of that schedule; the executive chairman role was eliminated, lead independent director Jeffrey A. Goldstein became chairman, and Norcross departed the board entirely. He framed it as the right moment to move to an independent board chair structure. The backdrop was difficult — FIS shares had fallen 37 per cent over the year, bank demand was softening, merchant clients were pulling back, and the company was executing a transformation plan targeting $500m of cost reductions.

Since leaving, Norcross’s public activity has been through boards rather than operating roles. He has been an independent director of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America since 2017, and serves on the Dean’s Executive Advisory Board at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, the University of Arkansas school he graduated from. In Jacksonville, where FIS is headquartered and where he remains based, he is a director of the YMCA of Florida’s First Coast and sits on the board of the KIPP Impact School. In 2024 his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, gave him its Nance-Millett Free Enterprise Award.

Education

University of Arkansas, Sam M. Walton College of Business

Bachelor of Science, Business Administration and Management, 1987