• Key insight: Fifth Third is using new AI tools to track the progress of its merger with Comerica, which it acquired earlier this year.
• Forward look: Fifth Third is just one of many banks that are increasingly creating their own AI tools.
• Expert quote: "These monitoring tools that are AI-powered have been very helpful for us to make sure that things are tracking as expected." — Bryan Preston, CFO of Fifth Third

As Fifth Third Bancorp integrates newly acquired Comerica, AI is watching.

Fifth Third, the Cincinnati-based regional bank, closed its purchase of Dallas-based Comerica in February. Since then, the combined $300 billion-asset lender has set an ambitious timeline for the integration process, pledging to finish its systems conversion by the end of Labor Day weekend.

How will Fifth Third pull that off? Part of the answer, CEO Tim Spence said Friday, involves a set of new AI tools the bank has developed to track the integration's progress — including by watching and listening to employee conversations.

"We actually have built some pretty cool tech tools for this conversion," Spence said during the bank's second quarter earnings call. These tools, he said, are "able to monitor the conversion in real time … essentially listening into the [Microsoft] Teams or Slack feeds and monitoring for any sort of sign that there may be a delay."

Fifth Third made the case Friday that the integration has been going smoothly. In the second quarter, the bank's earnings per share were 83 cents, just one penny below analysts' consensus expectation, according to S&P. And when adjusted to strip out "merger-related charges" and other, smaller items, Fifth Third said its core EPS came out to $1.02.

Net income came out to $801 million, marking a 28% jump from the same period last year.

As the melding of the two banks goes forward, AI will be keeping a close eye on things. According to Bryan Preston, Fifth Third's chief financial officer, the new tools aggregate and analyze conversations about the conversion process, including whether challenges have arisen or steps have fallen behind schedule, and quickly deliver those updates to tech managers.

"These monitoring tools that are AI-powered have been very helpful for us to make sure that things are tracking as expected," Preston told American Banker. "We've been able to build some nice real-time dashboards associated with, ultimately, the tens of thousands of little things on the checklist that have to go right for the system conversion."

One example is the bank's Treasury management business. These products are particularly difficult to convert, Preston said, because they're often very specifically tailored to a particular customer's needs.

The AI tools have "allowed us to escalate those kinds of issues faster, and then that allows us to prioritize resolution of those issues faster," Preston said.

Banks have increasingly developed their own AI tools in recent months, particularly as the products offered by tech companies have grown more expensive. PNC Financial Services Group, for example, has vowed to build its own "AI factory," including in-house language models and GPU computing.

In the second quarter, two highlights involved the bank's major fee businesses: wealth and asset management and commercial payments. Wealth and asset management generated $256 million in revenue, climbing 54% from last year's second quarter. And payments took in $254 million, up 67% from last year.

The bank also boasted high numbers for client retention. Fifth Third has kept 99.4% of Comerica's commercial clients, Spence said.

"We are building a Fifth Third that is not just bigger, but better, more differentiated, and more resilient," Spence said.