Pennington is moving Edward Jones from its traditional role as a stock brokerage firm into a new orientation as a financial-planning company. 

Of her 20,000 financial advisors, a record for the firm, she now has 5,000 Certified Financial Planners. This ramp-up will help Edward Jones “meet a growing and urgent need for trusted, personal financial advice,” in a world where 52% of affluent households want financial planning, compared to 29% who sought this type of advice in 2018, she said. This year, Edward Jones also launched its Generations private client service, its first foray into high-end wealth management. 

“We’re meeting this moment by expanding how we serve, moving toward a client-segmented model and aligning our compensation with the value we deliver to clients and their families,” she said in an email.

When markets swooned in April, NYSE Group President Lynn Martin was ready. Years of investment in cutting-edge technologies and processes had prepared the world’s largest exchange to weather the volatility and surging trading volumes wrought by tariff concerns. 

In a CNBC op-ed, she reassured investors that the “beating heart of the global financial system” had met the challenge, handling more than 1 trillion messages on two separate days with a median processing time of 30 microseconds.

“I felt it was my responsibility to remind people that the NYSE has been around 233 years. We’ve survived wars, pandemics and geopolitical uncertainty, so don’t panic,” she explained now. “We’re quite proud that our financial markets showed their resilience and strength during that time.”

For the fifth consecutive year, Donna Milrod, executive vice chair and chief product officer of Boston-based State Street Corporation, is a Most Powerful Women in Finance honoree.

At State Street, Milrod is responsible for leading the product development strategy, value propositions, and growth of the Investment servicing business. She leads a team of 600 and has  eight direct reports. Additionally, she serves on the executive committee and reports to Joerg Ambrosius, State Street’s head of investment services.

Milrod is also responsible for leading strategy, value propositions and growth of the company’s asset servicing business, which represents  more than 80 % of State Street’s overall business.

Over the past year, financial markets have been driven by higher rates and a potential shift toward deglobalization. In response, Hanneke Smits, global head of investment management at BNY, has aligned the bank’s portfolio strategies to meet evolving client needs.

This includes launching Pinpoint, a data-driven portfolio consultation service that has led to new client opportunities in Switzerland; debuting Pershing X Wove, a wealth-management platform for North American clients; and expanding a partnership with alternative credit specialist CIFC Asset Management, which allows clients around the world to access private credit exposure.

Emily Portney is the Global Head of BNY’s Asset Servicing business, which provides custody, fund services, private market support and data solutions to asset owners, traditional and alternative investment managers, insurance companies, banks and broker-dealers. She is a member of BNY’s Executive Committee.

Previously, Emily was BNY’s Chief Financial Officer, responsible for the company’s global financial strategy, accounting functions, the business-aligned CFO teams, treasury, capital management, tax, corporate development, investor relations, procurement and real estate. Prior to becoming CFO, she led the global client relationship, sales and service teams for Asset Servicing and oversaw the business in the Americas.

Before joining BNY, Emily was CFO for Barclays International, where she led a global organization spanning the Corporate and Investment Bank, the Private Bank, and the Cards and Payments businesses. She began her career with J.P. Morgan and held various leadership roles in her more than 20 years with the company. 

Emily is a member of the board of directors for MarketAxess, a publicly traded corporation. She holds a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree from Duke University.

In just her second year as president and co-head of Bank of America’s Merrill Wealth Management business, Lindsay Hans has met those challenges head on.

In partnership with Eric Schrimpf, president and co-head of the 25,000-employee Merrill Wealth Management unit, Hans boosted year-over-year revenue by 9% in 2024 and increased the AUM balance of the Investment Advisory Program by 18% year-over-year, among other accomplishments.

The unit’s success has continued into 2025. During the first half of this year, Merrill Wealth Management posted nearly $10 billion in revenue, and wealth management advisors added 12,700 clients and more than 20,000 households. As of March 31, Hans and Schrimpf oversaw client balances of $3.5 trillion.

Yie-Hsin Hung entered the financial services sector after earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University and an MBA from Harvard University. Her first stop after college: investment banking.

Although she enjoyed “the fast-paced environment and the opportunity to work on complex, high-stakes transactions” in investment banking, Hung eventually desired work that was “more enduring and purpose-driven.” She found work as the CEO of New York Life Investments from 2015 to 2022 and today as president and CEO of State Street Investment Management, formerly State Street Global Advisors. She’s been head of the world’s fourth largest investment management firm since 2022.

In her eight-year tenure as Nasdaq CEO, Adena Friedman has led a massive transformation of the iconic stock exchange into a global financial services technology powerhouse. Nasdaq has diversified beyond its core listings and index business into a business partner for banking and capital markets, expanding its reach into treasury, risk and compliance management and regulatory reporting. 

Anchored by a $10.5 billion acquisition of software giant Adenza in 2023, Nasdaq under Friedman’s leadership has most recently built a suite of compliance and anti-financial crime services used by most globally systemic institutions through AI-driven models for areas such as AML due diligence or sanctions assessments.

Jenny Johnson believes Franklin Templeton has unlocked the key to bringing investments in private markets to more clients, a trend that is likely to accelerate under Trump administration policies designed to broaden access to private equity, real estate and other less liquid investment options. The key is something the firm has been doing for three decades—educating financial advisers.

Advisers want to give their clients more options, said Johnson, president and CEO of Franklin Templeton, which manages about $1.6 trillion in assets. “There’s a real recognition that it’s kind of un-American if we don’t all have fair access to the same kinds of investments.” 

But it is not enough to pick a good product, she said. “If the firm behind that product hasn’t surrounded it with really robust education, it’s too hard for the advisers to understand.”

When TIAA launched an IRA product broadening access to its proprietary annuity products on March 10, the stock market recorded one of its most volatile days in years. Investors were fretting over the impact of tariffs and the possibility of a recession.

The day’s roller coaster ride reinforced what TIAA president and CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett already believed about the value of lifetime income annuities.

“Guaranteed income isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity,” Duckett said, arguing that people want security they can count on regardless of market swings. “That’s why we’re committed to expanding access to guaranteed lifetime income solutions, in both the institutional and retail markets.”