Ben Hoffman has no doubt Fifth Third Bank’s peers and competitors are mulling some of the same mobile app features and enhancements as the Cincinnati-based lender.
“There is more convergence in bank strategy than there is in bank execution,” said Hoffman, Fifth Third’s chief strategy officer and head of consumer products.
“It’s really about your ability to execute” at a sustained pace, he said.
For Fifth Third, that means leaning on dedicated staff, operating rhythms and experience, and systems set up to support success, he said.
Last week, Fifth Third was named best mobile banking app experience among regional banks in a J.D. Power survey. The bank’s app offers services like direct deposit switching and card controls, and features tools like SmartShield, its in-app security tool that “gamifies” digital safety. The lender continues to work on enhancements to the app, which about 2.4 million bank customers use to handle everyday banking tasks.
In Hoffman’s eyes, the $212 billion-asset bank’s approach stands out in part because of its focus on quality over quantity.
“We focus on quality where it matters, with the core theory being that, for the most part, our customers want banking to fade into the background,” he said. Rather than stuffing apps with features or equipping chatbots with an ever-growing roster of skills, “it needs to just work to support real lives.”
When Fifth Third releases a new feature in the mobile app, automated monitoring is set up to ensure the process works well; if there are defects, point people are contacted and troubleshooting begins. Product managers join release calls, no matter the hour, he noted.
It’s an “intentionally unsexy” approach, he said.
“It’s really about focusing on the things that matter to our customers and not falling in love with the thing that feels exciting and feels different,” Hoffman said. “It is more important to customers that banking works, than that banking is delightful.”
The bank’s technology and communications spending has ticked up in recent years, from $416 million in 2022, to $474 million in 2024, with increased investments in technology modernization being one of the drivers, according to Fifth Third’s annual filing. Bank executives, when reporting Q1 earnings in April, said technology investments would continue in the second quarter.
The bank declined to comment on its expectation for technology spending this year, or what it’s invested in the mobile app specifically. A spokesperson said Fifth Third has 735 technology employees in Cincinnati, and about 300 team members across technology, product, design and other areas of the company worked on development of the mobile app.
Behind the scenes, Fifth Third has sought to be intentional with its approach to digital, with the way it’s practically integrated into the organizational structure.
The approach the bank has taken, and one the reasons Hoffman has a “somewhat odd mandate”: If digital lives off to the side, and the mobile app is disconnected from product and run by IT as a piece of technology not powered by research, “you risk doing work for its own sake,” he said.
And the collaboration among product, technology and design is reflected in physical co-location and culture at the bank, Hoffman said. Teams are structured by customer jobs to be done – like getting into the app or getting paid – rather than by product.
“When you organize that way and then you embed customer research and co-development with the customers at every step, you focus on the things that matter more to customers, and you ensure a higher degree of relevance and salience,” he said.
That mindset continues to drive further enhancements. For one, Fifth Third is working on driving “more smarts” into Jeanie, the bank’s virtual banking assistant; the bank has sought to hone its ability to understand what a customer wants.
“We are certainly imagining a world in which you can achieve much of everyday banking in sort of native language interaction with Jeanie, just as you do today through screens and taps in a traditional mobile interface,” Hoffman said.
Fifth Third is also undertaking improvements to SmartShield and its customers’ Zelle experience, including helping clients manage fraud risk.
Hoffman said he expects material releases or substantial developments in the next six months in each of those areas.
The bank has focused its initial deployments of artificial intelligence in a couple of key places – “we work very hard to not use AI for its own sake,” Hoffman said – with Jeanie being one of those. “Hyper-customized” product and service recommendations, as well as identity and fraud protection, are the other areas, he noted.
