Month: July 2023

Fifth Third published its 2022 Sustainability Report on June 30. In it, President & CEO Tim Spence and Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer Kala Gibson shared a message regarding the Company’s commitment to sustainability.

“Last year was one filled with opportunities, accomplishments, challenges and growth—all of which continued in a very real way in 2023 as a crisis in our industry unfolded. We are pleased to report that the crisis did not occur inside the walls of Fifth Third.

This was due, in large part, to our relentless focus on our ambition to be the one bank people most value and trust. We’ve always striven to be there for our customers and in the last six months, we saw them be there for us. By proactively choosing Fifth Third every day, they recognized the value we provide and placed their trust here, with us.

Delivering on our sustainability strategy, priorities and commitments is key to our ability to continue generating long-term value to all our stakeholders. We are focused on keeping the customer at the center, building strong communities, delivering on our commitment to employees, promoting inclusion and diversity, and addressing climate change to create a more inclusive and sustainable world.

Keeping the Customer at the Center

For our customers, we are committed to innovating with technology while building strong human relationships and connections. Our Retail team made over 12 million customer outreach calls last year to ensure we were meeting our customers’ needs and to better understand what more we could do.

We continued to improve upon our innovative and inclusive consumer products like our award-winning Fifth Third Momentum® Banking checking and savings accounts. In 2022, we expanded Fifth Third Momentum’s Early Pay® feature to include income received from gig work, as well as some forms of government and retirement benefits. Since the launch in 2021, more than half a million customer accounts have received their pay up to two days early representing $27.6 million deposited last year.

To focus on the best outcomes for our customers and reduce punitive fees, we eliminated non-sufficient funds fees for all consumer accounts in June 2022. We have the lowest concentration of overdrafts as a percentage of deposit fees among peers who have significant consumer banking operations.

The same holds true for our business clients. We offer peer-leading, digitally-enabled Treasury Management Managed Services such as Expert AP®. This service helps our clients control their payments and improves access to payment information while also helping AP departments run more efficiently.

This focus resulted in Fifth Third being recognized in Fortune’s inaugural list of America’s Most Innovative Companies. The list honors the 300 companies transforming industries from the inside out. We are proud of this honor as it recognizes our employees’ commitment to innovate on behalf of the people we serve.

Building Strong Communities

In our view, banking is a noble profession. It’s a privilege to provide the services that our customers need; it’s also a privilege to help improve the well-being of our communities. Strong banks need strong communities and strong communities need strong banks. In early 2023, Fifth Third received an “Outstanding,” the highest rating possible, on its most recent Community Reinvestment Act performance examination from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. We received “Outstanding” ratings on each of the exam’s three tests: Lending, Investments and Service.

Our $180 million Fifth Third Empowering Black Futures Neighborhood Investment Program is flourishing and will create the kind of fundamental change that helps communities thrive long-term. This program, which is investing $20 million in each of the nine neighborhoods within our footprint, is enabling economic mobility for Black residents and supporting infrastructure, programming and financial access that has the potential to have life-changing, generational positive impact. From June 2021 through December 2022, $100.8 million has been invested in the $180 million program.

As an example of the impact we’re having, our investment of $2.1 million helped lead to the opening of Adelphi Bank, the first Black-owned depository institution in Ohio, in May 2023. Fifth Third was the largest investor among financial institutions, and Adelphi was formed by several prominent leaders, including one of our former Fifth Third Bank regional presidents, Jordan Miller. The Bank’s investment is consistent with our involvement with the OCC’s Project REACh. Participants like our Bank pledged to strengthen minority depository institutions and help reduce specific barriers that prevent full, equal and fair participation in the economy by traditionally disadvantaged communities.

Meeting community needs is paramount at Fifth Third. When Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida in September 2022, employees made 90,000 wellness calls to our customers. We also quickly assessed 147 financial centers for physical damage and had 95% of them opened within 48 hours while the remaining 5% opened within 72 hours. The Fifth Third Foundation donated $500,000 toward relief efforts to five local organizations and our Financial Empowerment Mobile, or eBus, rolled in to help community members apply for federal and disaster relief aid.

In addition to these times of immediate need, our foundations actively support our communities all year-long. In 2022, our total philanthropic giving was $38.8 million. Our employees logged more than 117,000 volunteer hours. One of the areas of focus for volunteerism continues to be financial access and capability. We have a suite of financial education programs, including the Fifth Third Young Bankers Club® and Fifth Third Bank Finance Academy®, and our eBus was active on the road for nearly 250 days of the year providing services directly to 30,000 people.

As part of our $100 billion environmental and social finance target that runs from 2021-2030, we provided over $5.2 billion of financing in eligible affordable housing last year. This commitment created and preserved over 6,280 units of housing. Over the last two years, under the social target, the Bank financed $15.4 billion in projects. This included nearly $739 million financed for essential services to lowand moderate-income communities.”

To continue reading this message from Fifth Third’s leaders, please access the 2022 Sustainability Report at www.53.com/sustainabilityreport.

On May 31, Comcast NBCUniversal donated 90 iPads to the Roybal Film and Television Production Magnet, a specialized secondary school curriculum whose mission is to build a more inclusive pipeline of historically underrepresented, college, and career ready students interested in the film and television industries, within the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center in Los Angeles, CA. The iPads will be used to promote internet access and improve digital skills for Roybal students.

The donation is part of Project UP, Comcast’s $1 billion initiative to advance digital equity through programs and community partnerships that connect people to the Internet, advance economic mobility, and open doors for the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, storytellers, and creators.

Craig Robinson, Chief Diversity Officer at NBCUniversal and a member of the Roybal School Advisory board, participated in a fireside chat moderated by Enrique Chiabra, Emmy award-winning journalist and News Anchor for Noticiero Telemundo 52, and shared his career journey, the importance of DEI for business, and answered questions from Roybal students at the Edward Roybal Learning Center. Following the conversation, Robinson presented the Comcast NBCUniversal donation to the school.

To learn more about Project UP, click here.