Artificial Intelligence at Fifth Third Bank

Fifth Third Bank, a number one regional monetary establishment with over 1,100 branches in 11 states, operates 4 predominant companies: business banking, department banking, shopper lending, and wealth and asset administration. Based in 1858 and headquartered in Cincinnati, the financial institution has assets in extra of $211 billion. In the course of the first quarter of 2025, Fifth Third Financial institution noticed mortgage development, web curiosity margin enlargement, and expense self-discipline, which led to optimistic working leverage.

Fifth Third Financial institution has been on the forefront of technological innovation for many years. Press supplies surrounding new methods be aware that the financial institution is proud to have launched the primary on-line automated teller system and shared ATM community within the U.S. in 1977 by permitting prospects 24/7 banking entry.

Moreover, this drastically elevated the variety of ATMs prospects might use since they have been capable of entry ATMs owned by different banks. Fifth Third straight invests in AI to reinforce its core banking operations and not directly invests in AI to enhance healthcare by way of Big Data Healthcare, an entirely owned oblique subsidiary.

Fifth Third’s annual filing in 2024 displays an uptick within the financial institution’s expertise and communications spending, displaying a roughly 14% improve in comparison with 2022. Fifth Third takes a extremely intentional and risk-minded method to AI, having spent the higher a part of 2024 focused on establishing key governance foundations earlier than rolling out AI capabilities. Moreover, they focus deployment on areas the place AI brings real enterprise worth.

This text examines two AI use instances at Fifth Third Financial institution:

• Conversational AI for streamlined customer support supply: Leveraging pure language processing (NLP) to scale back calls obtained by human brokers by double-digit percentages and saving hundreds of thousands in prices.
• Surfacing buyer satisfaction scores: Leveraging analytics to research buyer interactions and enhance agent efficiency.

Redefining Buyer Service with Conversational AI

The onset of the pandemic in early 2020 introduced the stress of heavy name volumes of contact facilities to the forefront. One study emphasizes how a voice-first method is required to facilitate contract facilities’ capability to deal with a sudden surge in calls.

Like many corporations, Fifth Third Financial institution noticed buyer inquiries skyrocket at the beginning of the pandemic. The financial institution was already piloting the idea of a chatbot within the fast years main as much as the pandemic. Then, in early 2020, because the pandemic unfolded, Fifth Third rapidly realized it had to assist its name middle, which was overwhelmed. 

Earlier than Jeanie 2.0, customer support brokers on the decision middle flooring have been required to scroll as much as learn the complete dialog historical past to know prospects’ wants and customized requests higher. Moreover, whereas Jeanie 1.0 might present step-by-step directions to finish particular duties, it had the next points:

• Incapability to at all times present the right solutions to prospects’ questions
• Related prospects to brokers when it wasn’t essential
• Required brokers to manually seek for and use quite a lot of content material to carry out completely different duties when serving to prospects, and discover the precise script telling them what data they should ship to the shopper
• Create their very own scripts to reply questions of a extra complicated vary

Screenshot of the Zelle Circulation for Jeanie 1.0 displaying the problematic early default to agent escalation (Supply: UC Center for Business Analytics)

Jeanie’s pure language understanding mannequin is constructed on LivePerson’s conversational platform and uses conventional AI, based on Senior Director of Conversational AI at Fifth Third Financial institution, Michelle Grimm.

Jeanie 2.0 is extra user-friendly for the Fifth Third brokers utilizing it. It makes use of LivePerson’s predefined content material library to streamline and improve effectivity for brokers when they’re serving to prospects. The documentation outlines the advantages of utilizing predefined content material, together with: 

• Time financial savings for brokers
• Ensures constant, error-free responses
• Maintains knowledgeable tone of voice

Fifth Third Financial institution’s Annual Report highlights the next advantages of Jeanie:

• Diminished calls requiring a stay agent by practically 10%
• Generated over $10 million in annual financial savings
• Improved buyer satisfaction
• Improved worker retention
• Shortened account opening instances by greater than 60%

The identical report additionally states that Jeanie underwent a big replace in October 2023, leading to increasing Jeanie’s capabilities by over 300%.

Alex Ross, Sr. Content material Producer for LivePerson, defined further advantages in a blog put up, together with Jeanie’s capability to reply to over 150 intents and over 30,000 phrases with over 95% accuracy.

Enhancing Buyer Expertise (CX) with AI-surfaced Buyer Satisfaction Scores

Historically, corporations use a survey-based system to handle buyer expertise and agent efficiency, and Fifth Third Financial institution was no exception. The financial institution primarily relied on buyer surveys to realize perception into how prospects considered their interactions with the contact middle. Nonetheless, this methodology has notable shortcomings, particularly in an business the place 88% of financial institution prospects report that buyer expertise is as important, or much more necessary, than the precise services and products. These limitations embrace:

• Low visibility for managers into agent contributions to buyer expertise
• Identification of solely a restricted vary of coachable subjects

Additionally, metrics similar to common deal with time have been used to judge agent efficiency. With a rise in automation, common deal with time loses its capability to function an efficient metric. The reason being that automation leads to the extra complicated points being surfaced to brokers, which ends up in a rise in common deal with time. Fifth Third transitioned away from specializing in surveys in favor of sentiment evaluation.

In accordance with the case study revealed by NiCE, Fifth Third had a number of targets associated to buyer expertise and satisfaction, together with:

• Attain the highest of impartial third-party buyer expertise rankings
• Acquire buyer sentiment metrics from each interplay
• Receive insights from a extra consultant group of financial institution prospects
• Change the expensive, limited-utility survey program

Fifth Third Financial institution started utilizing Enlighten AI and Nexidia Analytics by NiCE within the hopes of reaching these targets and enhancing how they coach 700 brokers throughout 3 areas. Extra particularly, the sentiment rating from Enlighten permits Fifth Third to search out an excellent vary for common deal with time for its brokers. 

Within the video beneath, Michelle Grimm, Senior Director of Conversational AI at Fifth Third Financial institution, explains how the financial institution has improved agent suggestions with Enlighten AI, citing metrics like common deal with time at across the 1:21 mark:

Grimm explains how Fifth Third was ready to make use of NICE Enlighten to determine the optimum AHT vary past which sentiment declines as soon as the higher finish of the vary is reached; the optimum vary recognized was 3-5 minutes.

Fifth Third makes use of the sentiment scores to refine the teaching course of and finally enhance buyer interactions. Grimm mentions that her staff makes use of a color-coded system consisting of an ordinary purple, yellow, and inexperienced distribution to concentrate on optimistic behaviors for reinforcement and handle areas for enchancment.

The sentiment scores have served as a foundation for improved collaboration throughout Fifth Third’s three geographically distributed name websites: Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, and the Philippines.

The financial institution additionally rolled out Nexidia Analytics in 2021. As a part of that effort, they analyzed over 15.7 million interactions involving 2,300 brokers.

With the shift from survey to sentiment, Fifth Third Financial institution noticed some immediate benefits, together with improved worker productiveness, larger worker compliance, and decrease prices as speech analytics recognized processes that could possibly be automated.

Elevated sentiment scores can have wide-reaching results throughout the complete enterprise over time. Within the above video, Grimm is emphatic that optimistic suggestions to brokers interprets into buyer expertise. That is why Grimm says that it’s important for brokers to hone areas during which they’re good in addition to concentrate on areas of enchancment. She totally acknowledges how customer-based the banking business is, which is why enhancing sentiment scores is so important. 

Over time, sustained elevated sentiment helps to:

• Strengthen buyer loyalty
• Reinforce the financial institution’s repute
• Scale back buyer churn
• Scale back compliance dangers

A 2023 Bain & Firm report exhibits customers who give excessive loyalty scores price much less to serve and spend extra with their financial institution. Moreover, they’re extra prone to advocate their financial institution to household and mates.

Whereas Fifth Third has not revealed quantifiable numbers, the financial institution has indicated in press supplies that using NiCE Enlighten AI and Nexidia Analytics resulted in elevated sentiment scores and decrease prices.