Fifth Third Bancorp ranks No. 17 among the top 20 U.S. banks, with operations stretching from the upper Midwest to the lower Southeast. But even with that reach, the company must carefully consider its technology spending to better compete with much larger rivals.
“Fifth Third isn’t a trillion-dollar bank—I don’t have the IT capital that they have at JPMorganChase, where my counterpart there, Lori [Beer, global CIO of JPMorganChase], has a budget that’s 20x mine,” says Jude Schramm, chief information officer at Fifth Third. “And so for us to be nimble, we had to strategically lean into partnerships and do a little bit more buy than build.”
One partnership that explains Schramm’s thinking is the deployment of commercial loan operations systems provided by financial tech provider nCino. Building that same system at Fifth Third would have taken five times longer and probably cost twice as much, estimates Schramm. In technologies in which the bank doesn’t need to differentiate itself from rivals, and parity is good enough, he says, “I’m okay being with a partner.”
Other vendors Schramm has tapped in recent years include Workday’s human resources software and generative artificial intelligence offerings from Microsoft, including the 365 and GitHub Copilots.
“We adapt ourselves to take the best of what those platforms have to offer,” says Schramm, who has a rule that Fifth Third customizes no more than 5% of any third-party platform. Every 10 weeks, the business and IT teams meet to align on their software development strategies.
When assessing software from vendors, Schramm coordinates closely with top executives at Fifth Third, including CEO Tim Spence and CFO Bryan Preston, to understand where they think technology is evolving and what can best suit what Fifth Third wants to address.
Fifth Third has no firm rule for how many vendors the company will work with and in some cases will seek shorter term relationships for technology that can be swapped out if better technology comes along. For core systems like what nCino offers, expectations tend to be higher. “We’re assuming we’re with them for decades,” says Schramm. “And so we choose those very carefully.”
Schramm joined Fifth Third after a 17-year tenure at General Electric, where he focused on digital transformation within the industrial manufacturing sector, including as CIO of the company’s aviation division. He joined the bank in 2018 to modernize Fifth Third’s IT from the ground floor.
A five-year modernization plan has stretched on a bit longer than expected, complicated in part by the 2019 acquisition of smaller rival MB Financial and then the global pandemic. The early focus for Schramm included investing in new data centers and upgrading mainframe computers, which he described as ”boring hard work—but it’s the stuff you have to do.” With a more solid foundation, along with a cloud partnership with Amazon Web Services, Schramm was able to lean more into his “buy” strategy.
Schramm is seeing some encouraging results, including “measurable” productivity gains that allow fewer employees to attend meetings, with AI systems now sharing notes from those meetings and action items. Microsoft Copilot has been deployed to about 14,000 workers and around 5,000 of them use it daily. Meanwhile, nearly 450 engineers use GitHub Copilot.
Another 100 employees are also testing Microsoft’s M365 Copilot, which integrates with Word, Excel, and other office-focused applications. Humans remain in the loop for all actions that require a decision and Fifth Third hasn’t yet adopted generative AI for use with its external customers.
And while some tech leaders have scoffed at the $30 per-head, per-month cost for many generative AI productivity tools, Schramm says it is important to invest early on AI, especially with large partners like Microsoft. The bank is also frequently talking to AI startups, both in fintech and for narrow applications that could benefit departments like legal, but remains on the sideline until the use cases are more clearly defined.
“We have a strong belief in experimentation,” says Schramm. “We’ve got a motto here to get 1% better every day.”
John Kell
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NEWS PACKETS
Intel CEO exits beleaguered chipmaker. Pat Gelsinger was forced to retire as CEO less than four years after he had returned to lead Intel after successful leadership runs at VMware and EMC. Intel has been hemorrhaging money, laid off thousands, suspended its dividend to save cash, and has fallen deeply behind AI chip makers like Nvidia. In August, under Gelsinger, Intel’s stock fell more than 25% in one day—its worst day since 1974—following a poor earnings report. Two top executives were named co-CEOs to replace Gelsinger on an interim basis while the board seeks a permanent successor.
Blue Yonder ransomware attack drags on for a second week. Over the weekend, supply chain software company Blue Yonder disclosed that it was making “good progress” recovering from a ransomware attack, saying “several” impacted customers had been brought back online and that it continues to actively work with other clients to restore their normal business operations. As for ransomware attacks in general, “We were getting five major ones a year back in 2011, now we’re getting 20, 25 major ones a day,” David Wall, a professor of criminology at Leeds University, tells the New York Times.
U.K. lawsuit seeks $1.25 billion in damages from Microsoft over cloud fees. A class-action lawsuit alleges that Microsoft charges customers of AWS, Google, and Alibaba Cloud higher fees than those that use the software giant’s own Azure cloud computing service. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission has reportedly opened an antitrust investigation into allegations that Microsoft is imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from Azure to rival platforms. Microsoft declined to comment to Fortune on both the lawsuit and the reported probe.
Amazon debuts new features and products for AI and computing. At its annual re:Invent conference this week, Amazon announced a steady drumbeat of product news and cameos, including a rare appearance by Apple, which touted AWS’ custom AI chips for services like search. Amazon also rolled out chip clusters that will make it easier for AI partner Anthropic to train large language models that are required for generative AI. Amazon also boasted it can make data centers run more efficiently, with updated cooling systems that can integrate both air and liquid cooling. A new security service Amazon also debuted this week will aim to trim the time it will take for a business to recover from cyberattacks.
ADOPTION CURVE
Most companies on their responsible AI journeys haven’t reached the end. Research by Accenture and Amazon Web Services found that 72% of companies embarked less than two years ago on a so-called responsible AI journey, the effort to put policies in place that can help them mitigate risk and remain regulatory compliant. But Accenture estimates that it usually takes five years to achieve “maturity” when it comes to responsible AI, including data and risk management controls, real-time data monitoring, and firm oversight of third-party AI vendors.
That may explain why 56% of Fortune 500 companies still cite AI as a “risk factor” in their annual reports, up from just 9% a year ago. Among those flagging AI risks, 74% of companies surveyed by Accenture and AWS have had to temporarily pause at least one AI or generative AI project in the past year.
JOBS RADAR
Hiring:
– New York State Office of Information Technology Services is seeking a deputy chief technology officer, based in New York City. Posted salary range: $137.5K-$173.7K/year.
– Ripple is seeking a director of corporate IT, based in San Francisco. Posted salary range: $201.6K-$252K/year.
– S&P Global is seeking a CTO of automotive forecasting, based in Trenton, NJ. Posted salary range: $157.9K-$315K/year.
– Univision is seeking a director of technology, based in Fresno, Calif. Posted salary range: $120K-$128K/year.
Hired:
