Fidelity Investments is a privately held financial services giant, which changes how you sell to it. There is no public RFP firehose the way a federal agency posts everything to SAM.gov. But Fidelity does run an open supplier registration, and it runs an active supplier diversity program with real memberships behind it. If you sell professional services, technology, marketing, facilities, or back-office support, this is a buyer worth pursuing. Here is how the front door actually works, and where the side door for certified diverse businesses sits.
What Fidelity buysFidelity is a procurement operation the size of a mid-cap company on its own. It buys the categories you would expect from a large financial-services firm: technology and software, professional and consulting services, marketing and creative, facilities and real estate services, print and fulfillment, staffing, and travel and events. Fidelity does not publish a granular category list on its supplier site, so treat that list as the shape of the spend rather than a verified catalog. The practical read: if your business sells B2B services or technology to large enterprises, you fit the buyer profile. If you sell consumer products, you probably do not.
The firm publishes a Supplier Diversity Economic Impact Report, which signals that diverse spend is tracked and reported internally. That matters because tracked spend is spend a category manager is motivated to grow.
How registration actually worksFidelity centralized its supplier onboarding through SupplierOne, a third-party supplier registration network. You register your business at fidelity.supplierone.co. This is the real front door, and it is open. You do not need an invitation to create a profile.
Registering does two things. It puts your company information, capabilities, and certifications into a database Fidelity's category managers and sourcing teams can search. And it sets you up as a payable vendor if and when you win work. A few specifics worth knowing before you start:
- Invoicing runs through Ariba Network. Fidelity's FAQ states it prefers invoices submitted via the SAP Ariba Network. So while discovery and registration happen in SupplierOne, the transactional plumbing is Ariba. If you are already on the Ariba Network from selling to other large enterprises, that is a small head start.
- Registration is necessary, not sufficient. A SupplierOne profile makes you findable. It does not put you in a queue for a contract. Large privately held buyers source against specific needs, and most awards still flow through relationships, referrals, and category managers who already know your name.
The honest version: registration is table stakes. Do it first so you are in the system, then spend your real energy getting in front of the people who buy your category.
How to get noticed (and what gets you invited)Because Fidelity does not bid most work in public, getting noticed is about being where its sourcing and supplier diversity teams already look. Three moves do most of the work.
Get your certification into the profile. Fidelity's category managers can filter for diverse suppliers, and a verified certification is the filter that surfaces you. More on which certifications below.
Show up through the councils Fidelity already funds. Fidelity is a sponsoring partner of NMSDC, a member of WBENC, a sponsoring participant of NGLCC, and a sponsor of Disability:IN. Those memberships are not decoration. They are where the relationships form. Council matchmaker events, regional NMSDC and WBENC meetings, and Disability:IN conferences are the rooms where a Fidelity category manager will actually meet a supplier. A cold SupplierOne profile is invisible by comparison.
Have a tight capability statement and a clear category fit. When a Fidelity buyer pulls your profile or meets you at a council event, they decide in about a minute whether you map to a need. Lead with the NAICS codes and service lines you actually deliver, two or three named client references at enterprise scale, and your certification status front and center.
For inquiries that do not fit the registration flow, Fidelity's supplier diversity team can be reached at FidelitySpendWorks@fmr.com, with stated hours of 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM ET and roughly a two-business-day response. Use it for program questions, not as a substitute for registering.
The diversity-certification angleFidelity's supplier diversity program explicitly covers minority, women, LGBT, veteran, and disabled-owned businesses. The certifications that map to that scope, and the bodies Fidelity is tied to, are:
- NMSDC / MBE for minority-owned businesses. Fidelity is a sponsoring partner. This is the highest-leverage certification for the largest pool of categories.
- WBENC / WBE for women-owned businesses. Fidelity is a member.
- NGLCC / LGBTBE for LGBT-owned businesses. Fidelity is a sponsoring participant.
- Disability:IN for disability-owned (DOBE) and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses. Fidelity is a sponsor.
If you qualify for one of these and have not certified yet, certify before you finish your SupplierOne profile. A self-declared diverse business and a third-party-certified one are treated very differently inside a corporate program. The certification is what unlocks the supplier diversity filter and the council relationships at the same time.
If you are weighing where to start, the NMSDC path is usually the broadest. We walk through the full process, costs, and timeline in our NMSDC certification guide. If you would rather hand off the paperwork and have your applications generated and submitted for you, that is what CertifyAll is built to do.
Is there a Tier-2 side door?Most large supplier diversity programs run a Tier-2 (second-tier) track, where diverse businesses subcontract through Fidelity's existing prime suppliers and that spend still counts toward Fidelity's reported diverse-supplier goals. Fidelity publishes a diverse-spend impact report, which strongly implies it tracks indirect spend the way Tier-2-active companies do. We could not verify a separately named Tier-2 program page, so do not assume a formal application exists until you confirm it directly with the supplier diversity team.
The practical play is the same either way. Identify the large primes that already hold Fidelity contracts in your category, and pitch them on subcontracting to a certified diverse business. Even where the front door is slow, the prime-to-sub path is often faster, because the prime has a live contract and a reason to add diverse spend to it.
Where to go nextRegister on SupplierOne, get certified through the body that fits your ownership, and put yourself in the council rooms Fidelity actually funds. That sequence beats waiting on a cold profile every time.
Fidelity is one of dozens of corporate programs with an active diverse-supplier track. If you want to map the firms that buy what you sell, browse the corporate program directory and work the ones that match your category and certification.
