Nasdaq 2024 Sustainability Report
Sarah Youngwood
EVP & CFO, Nasdaq
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EVP & CFO, Nasdaq
Introduction
Sarah Youngwood is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Nasdaq. She serves as the Co-Chair of Nasdaq's Corporate Sustainability Steering Committee overseeing the work of the Corporate Sustainability Strategy and Reporting Team and the development of the Company’s corporate sustainability strategy. In the following Q&A, Ms. Youngwood reflects on Nasdaq’s focus on powering resilient growth.
How does Nasdaq’s strategy power resilient growth?
Nasdaq is a trusted partner to our clients. We help them navigate the financial system by simplifying complexity and maximizing their ability to drive resilient growth. Nasdaq is focused on executing against core themes that are foundational to markets, where we have deep expertise, and where we believe we can expand the role we play for more clients.
During our March 2024 Investor Day, Nasdaq introduced three strategic priorities that underpin our approach to delivering resilient and scalable growth. We successfully delivered on these priorities in 2024 as we further aligned Nasdaq’s business to meet our clients’ needs and the megatrends shaping our industry.
Integrate – Successfully integrate Adenza into Nasdaq, unlock synergies, and drive operating leverage: Nasdaq’s Financial Technology Division ended 2024 with a well-structured operating model, and we are deploying the One Nasdaq go-to-market approach to deliver holistically for our clients. In addition, on the sustainability front, Adenza's operations now benefit from Nasdaq's sustainability initiatives including our commitment to use 100% renewable electricity.
Innovate – Build upon our technology foundation by investing in AI opportunities across our products and our employees: In 2024, Nasdaq introduced new AI-powered solutions and product offerings designed to aid in the fight against financial crime, help companies expedite and make better sustainability decisions, and digitize corporate governance. We saw solid client adoption, and our product managers continue to work on delivering new AI features in product roadmaps. Building on this success, Nasdaq has a strong innovation pipeline with various product enhancements launching over the course of 2025. Within our internal operations, our focus on AI adoption has shifted from exploration and experimentation to driving impact. Nasdaq’s commitment to source 100% renewable electricity extends to our use of AI.
Accelerate – Accelerate the impact of our divisional structure and unlock new growth opportunities that will drive our business into the future: Nasdaq completed 11 cross-sells in 2024. Cross-sell opportunities accounted for over 15% of the Financial Technology Division’s pipeline and Nasdaq remains on track to exceed $100 million in run-rate revenue from cross-sells by the end of 2027.
The steadfast execution of these strategic initiatives allowed us to deliver strong financial results in a dynamic operating environment. As we move forward and continue to deliver on this approach, Nasdaq will bring corporates, investors, market operators, and market participants together to raise capital, invest successfully, and improve the resilience and integrity of the financial system.
How does Nasdaq’s culture amplify the positive impact that its employees create?
Our people are the driving force behind our success, and Nasdaq’s ability to attract and retain top talent depends on fostering their growth, engagement, and wellbeing. We invest in our employees by providing meaningful development opportunities, recognizing their contributions, and creating a supportive workplace. As a financial technology company, we recognize that building cutting edge technical and financial skills is critical for success. We partner with institutions of higher education, functional specific associations that provide continuing professional education (CPE) credits for accountants, as well as industry leaders including the AWS Skills Guild and Microsoft’s AI Business School to offer IT skills development programs.
By offering professional development programs, comprehensive benefits, and engagement initiatives, we achieved record low attrition in 2024. Our biannual employee sentiment surveys help maintain high engagement levels and provide valuable feedback for continuous improvement. This focus on employee engagement supports long-term business resilience and future growth.
How does Nasdaq support its clients to help them achieve their sustainability goals?
Nasdaq’s clients across the financial system face an increasingly complex operating environment as they navigate regulatory pressures, disparate reporting requirements, and rising compliance costs. From our position at the intersection of technology and the financial system, we play a unique role in helping our clients navigate these evolving requirements as they execute their own sustainability objectives and strategies.
Nasdaq supports clients through three core pillars: enabling companies to access capital and drive innovation via exchange listings and specialized sustainability indexes; enhancing disclosure and transparency by offering comprehensive services for best-practice sustainability programs and regulatory reporting; and scaling new market and infrastructure solutions, such as platforms that digitize carbon credits and facilitate their efficient trading and custody. As Nasdaq and our clients navigate the complexity of an evolving sustainability ecosystem, we are committed to advancing initiatives that can be upheld for the long term.
What role do you see technology and innovation playing in transforming Nasdaq's sustainability strategy in the future?
Technology innovation and disruption is in our DNA – they are the principles we were founded on. We continue to demonstrate this in everything that we do today as we embrace inclusive growth and empower our employees to drive innovation. Our innovation and AI strategy has two prongs, "in the product" and "on the business". “In the product” is how we describe our focus on driving innovation across our suite of solutions. Nasdaq’s robust technology capabilities and innovative solutions enhance our competitive edge with greater efficiencies, proprietary data offerings, and advanced solutions in investment analytics and fraud detection. This materialized across our products, including within our sustainability portfolio. In 2024, we:
Enhanced Nasdaq Verafin’s robust suite of AI-based Targeted Typology Analytics, with new capabilities for detecting terrorist financial and drug trafficking activities;
Bolstered Nasdaq Verafin and Nasdaq Market Surveillance offerings with Generative AI to automate workflows that improve and streamline critical research and regulatory reporting tasks;
Introduced AI-powered features in Nasdaq Boardvantage® through a collaboration with Microsoft; and
Continued to expand the benchmarking capabilities of our AI-powered Sustainable Lens.
"On the business" describes our focus on innovation internally, to drive greater efficiency and productivity across our organization. We actively empower our workforce to leverage AI to drive innovation. After a successful 2024 where we focused on “exploration and experimentation," we are now leveraging that foundation to scale the use of AI and drive impact and resiliency across the organization.
With innovation and AI as key enablers, we are positioning Nasdaq to drive resilient growth and create lasting value for the long term for our clients and our Company.