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Welcome to Leadership Reimagined, where game
changing conversations are reshaping the world of work.
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I'm Janaceli, the CEO and founder
of LA Group, Executive Search Advisors,
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where we are reimagining search through our
longstanding commitment to diversity, equity and
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inclusion. On today's topic, a
CEO's commitment thriving communities drive corporate success.
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I am delighted to welcome Tim Spence, President, CEO and Director of Fifth
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Third Corp, a top twenty bank
by assets before being named CEO in twenty
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twenty two and President in twenty twenty. Tim joined Fifth Third in twenty fifteen
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as Chief stragg Officer and later became
head of Consumer Bank, responsible for Fifth
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Thirds retail banking, mortgage, auto, specialty lending and payments, as well
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as key strategic growth capabilities such as
digital marketing and fintech partnerships. Prior to
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joining Fifth Third, Tim was a
senior partner in the financial services practice at
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Oliver Wyman, recognized for his innovative
vision in its significantly advancing Fifth Thirds digital
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transformation. In twenty eighteen, American
Banker honored Tim as Digital Banker of the
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Year. Tim believes that banks like
fifth third can be a catalyst for positive
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change in communities, and he demonstrates
this through his service to various higher education
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and economic development organizations in Ohio and
beyond. Tim is a founding member of
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Fifth Thirds Enterprise University Leadership Council,
established in twenty twenty, and he's executive
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sponsor of the African American Business Resource
Group. During these very busy times for
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banks, Tim, I'm delighted you
could join us today. Thanks, Janna,
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it's great to be here. Well, these are interesting times, and
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I want to talk a little bit
about your leadership and some of those interesting
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facts that I've read about in terms
of your upbringing and what might have contributed
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to your success today. So I've
read that you learn to code in the
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first grade. You grew up breaking
apart and reassembling electronics such as toasters and
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computers. Your dad was a financial
planner with ubs and he taught you how
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to read financial statements at an early
age, and that you set an ongoing
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goal to read twenty pages a day, and you're a runner. So are
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these some of the drivers that got
you to be the youngest CEO of a
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top ten bank in the US at
the age of forty three. Thanks for
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the question, and it's funny to
reflect back on all those things. I
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think, in particular in times like
the one that we find ourselves in,
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I at least become very appreciative of
the experience that I had for so many
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years, including experiences that maybe didn't
seem like they were going to be relevant
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to the future, where all of
a sudden you find yourself looking back and
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a lesson. I mean, narrowly
to your question about what got me to
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where I am career wise, I
actually don't think it's any of those things.
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I think it's people. I had
people at several hard forks in my
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life, whether they were educational forks
or character defining forks or career forks,
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who nudged me in one direction or
another. You know, folks who took
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a risk on hiring me, including
the person who hired me at all of
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women actually overrule the other partners on
the interview slate, or folks like our
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prior Ceo, greg and Carmichael,
who gave me the opportunity here but constantly
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pushed me to get what I needed
to get done in a given area done.
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In a period of twenty four months
and to get the right talent in
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behind me so that I could go
on to the next thing. And as
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I look back on my own career, it is absolutely invariably it's those people
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that really got me to wear it
was. Now that said, I do
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think all of the other things that
you mentioned are are important. I mean
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I have always been curious, and
I was fortunate to grow up in a
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house where it was okay to break
stuff as long as you could figure out
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I put it back together. I
think that taught me to understand how things
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work. Maybe at a different level
I did learn. I mean I was
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an internal basic, so it was
a very basic coding and then you know,
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through computer science courses in college and
otherwise learned a series of things that
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would be the digital equivalent of the
Rosetta stone today in terms of dead programming
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languages. But they were valuable because
they forced you to be able to express
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your thought in a different language,
right and absolutely when I had I had
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a decent run at the age of
twelve or thirteen mowing neighbor's lawns, and
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my dad thought it would be a
good idea at that age to teach me
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how to read a financial statement so
that I can start investing money depending it
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on stuff and all of those things
along with what I get out of the
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books. The books are as much
as anything a stress relief tool. But
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they're frames, right, They're like
holding an empty picture frame up to the
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world and you can kind of pick
what frame you look at a problem through.
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And when you do that at and
you have a good collection of frames,
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it causes you to see the world
in different ways. We've all probably
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had that experience if we framed a
piece of art that we have hanging on
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the wall, like the right frame
makes the painting, So that those things
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are valuable, especially in times of
uncertainty, in helping to triangulate a strategic
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course or a course of action.
Obviously, some of these things that you
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grew up with did shape who you
are today, right in terms of that
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intellectual curiosity. So I'm just going
to talk a little bit about your leadership.
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What do you look for in leaders
coming in? Is it that intellectual
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curiosity, particularly when you know,
like we are doing very difficult times right
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now. Being able to pivot and
being agile really important in decision making.
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So what do you look for in
your leaders You know, that's a great
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question. I think at the most
fundamental level, there are three things that
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you look for in leaders. Certainly
that I one is the ability to set
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vision. And by vision, I
don't mean you know, develop a strategic
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plan or a thesis for the way
that a market will play out, although
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that is part of it. It's
the ability to both understand the circumstances at
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a level that allows you to anticipate
future developments, but also then to understand
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yourself and yourself as a leader,
your organization right, the collection of people
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that you're responsible for, and then
the attributes of the business, so that
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you can set a course which includes
the strategic investments, but also the culture
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and the talent model and the operating
rhythms that need to support it. The
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second thing, then is the ability
to get talent right. And that's both
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attracting great people, but it's also
about how you develop great people and how
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you mold great people in teams.
And one of the questions that I like
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to ask groups of people when I
get together inside our company is is this
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a collection of individuals or is it
a team? And you'll find that there
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are some organizations that sort of function
okay, is a collection of individuals,
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it just is not a good model
in a company like ours. So you
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have to have the ability to get
great people. But then you've got to
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be able to get those great people
to believe in something that's bigger than they
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are, and to want to be
part of something that asks them, at
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least at the margin, to subordinate
their own personal motivations for the sake of
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the whole. The last thing,
then, is the ability to drive execution,
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and in particular and a business like
ours, which is very tightly connected
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to the economic cycle and influenced by
factors that are outside your control. Your
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ability to take a plan vision that
you've developed and the collection of people that
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you've gathered to deliver it, and
then to navigate the unexpected changes and to
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be able to adapt and still get
the outcomes that you expect are is a
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unique skill in another well, in
today's world where talent is really at a
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premium. I mean, it is
a supply issue. But you've mentioned in
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the past that people can come to
fifth third and have like eight careers and
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they don't have to leave. How
do you hold on to your people?
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How do you make that happen?
Where they can really want to be there
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and stay with you. Yeah,
you know. I was with one of
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our leaders the other day. She
was celebrating our thirtieth anniversary with the company.
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Wow, many careers have you had
inside the bank? And it was
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more than a dozen, So I
may be shooting too low when I say
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eight. This idea of eight careers
isn't mind. It came from our HR
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folks who told me that the kids
who graduate college these days will probabilistically have
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eight different careers before they get to
retire thirty to forty years into the future.
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And I think in a world where
there are going to be more people
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retiring every year than there are coming
out of high school and college, a
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big part of the game is going
to be finding ways to inspire people with
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the ways in which they can grow
inside our company as opposed to go in
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outside. I mean, some people
may graduate from college and know exactly what
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they wanted to do, but I
certainly was not one of those. Like,
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if you actually sat back and plotted
out my career course, it would
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look more like a random walk through
the forest than it would a straight line.
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Part of the way that you keep
them in that environment is by making
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sure that the opportunities exist to go
through that own that unique personal exploration that
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I think most of us have in
our twenties and thirties, to sort of
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figure out where you have that intersection
of the things that you're passionate about and
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what you're good at. I think
the second thing, which is a little
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bit contrarian, or at least was
the last couple of years, is that
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I am a big believer in the
value of place. I think that we
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are all less aware than we should
be of the impact that the environment has
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on us, and that the impact
that other people have on us. And
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if you create a great place and
you have people in it, great things
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tend to happen. Right, Tenous
things that you didn't expect tend to happen.
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Relationships build that, new connections get
made. That creates career avenues,
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It creates friendships and social bonds.
The office is like one of the last
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places in society where you really do
draw together people from all different backgrounds and
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perspectives and remind them that there are
fundamental beliefs that are shared and a commonality
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of purpose. And I think that
extends beyond just your office building. And
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it also is the way that you
handle what we think of as our campus,
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which is like the area immediately around
our office and the other employers that
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inhabit that space. We did some
things in our Cincinnati headquarters this past fall
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that start to work on creating a
young professionals group that actually cuts across major
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employers here in Cincinnati. And that
was actually born out of one of my
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own experiences and moving to a new
city where I didn't know anybody, you
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know, call it twenty years ago, and in struggling to find people who
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may have shared common interests or otherwise, so I ended up throwing my own
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parties. And if you brought someone, if you were invited, you brought
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somebody that nobody else in the room
knew. You got to eat for free,
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and you didn't have to kick in
to cover the beer in the wine.
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But if anybody else in the room
knew your guests, then you had
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to pay that you know, your
fair share, ye will, And it
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created a network of young people in
that community that wouldn't otherwise have existed.
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And I think that's the same sort
of an idea here as we have to
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be much more focused on the ways
in which we create real networks as opposed
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to sort of add supported social networks. Yeah, we do recruiting for many
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clients. We find that purpose driven
organizations. People are attracted there. They
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want to go someplace almost any age
in today's world. They want to go
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someplace where they're going to have an
impact and feel part of a community that's
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doing good. And I have to
commend you for what you're doing at fifth
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third because you've said, and that's
the topic of today, really, you
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cannot be successful. Organizations can't fifth
third can't be successful unless communities are successful.
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And that I'll quote you too.
Many of our black and brown citizens
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and their neighborhoods have been shut out
or left behind over the course of them
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past many, many decades. So
you, as leader at fifth third end,
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I guess your predecessor as well,
are making significant investments to accelerate that
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equality and community. So tell us
how you're doing that, what this holistic
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approach is, because I think this
is so significant. People want to work
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for organizations that are doing good and
making good at the same time. Yeah,
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you know, I have to give
my predecessor and longtime boss Greg Carmichael
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credit in this area. I mean, I think it's eight years ago now.
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We entered into a community benefits agreement
that, at least to my knowledge,
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is the only community benefits agreement that's
been done in the past decade that
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wasn't tied to getting a merger approval. Greg just did it because he was
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looking at the footprint, and he
was looking at how we wanted to be
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seen as an actor in the community, and it just felt like the right
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thing to do. So that five
year, thirty billion dollar commitment, which
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we later upsized a little bit,
you know, really was the start of
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us thinking differently about the role we
play in our community. I like to
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remind our people, and I'll tell
you this turmoil in the banking sector right
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now is ben probably the strongest reminder
that we've had that banks are only as
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strong as their customers and the communities
where they operate. Like, for every
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ten dollars of loans we make,
if you just look at the banking sector
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balance sheet, about a dollar comes
from shareholders capital and nine dollars comes from
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your customers. Right, it's as
a byproduct of that. If your customers
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have confidence in your company and believe
that you are a constructive member of the
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community where they live, and they
have faith in the bank, then the
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bank's funding base is stable. And
if the people that you're loaning money to
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are making prudent investments, are creating
economic opportunities for a broad cross section and
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the population, and therefore are boosting
employment and savings, then homes get bought
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and community participation. You can actually
see this in the data goes up in
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terms of civic involvement and things go
really well. But if those things are
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not there, if the customers don't
feel vested in the bank, if the
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bank has not been clear about the
connectivity it has in its communities, and
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or if it's attached to communities that
are undergoing significant traction and it's not helping
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them to see a bridge to the
other side, then things can unravel pretty
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quickly. But some of the outcomes
you look at, which are like high
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school graduation rates, more green space
and beautification, I mean, are you
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how are you measuring those outcomes?
How are you what are you looking You're
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making these investments in these communities,
So the outcomes you're looking for, what
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are they? What I think I
would say is that the measure we want
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is vitality. We want communities to
be healthier. In the specific case of
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the investments we've made in some of
the neighborhoods across the footprint, which I
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do think is among the more innovative
things we've done, certainly in that area,
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is how well they function. So
you think about a neighborhood that's healthy,
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like it has a health We just
think about the ones that you visit.
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There's a healthy commercial strip, and
the anchors of that commercial strip are
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generally you say, what needs to
be there. There needs to be fresh
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food, there needs to be financial
services, and generally there needs to be
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urgent care. Right. There are
places where people can meet that are safe
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and common and where they can recreate
together. Right, whether that's green space,
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certainly in the case of our southeastern
markets, it's green space, and
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some of the ones we have in
the Upper Midwest it's more like an enclosed
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community center just given the weather.
But it's common space and then that there
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is participation in the improvement in the
community. Right. I think one of
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the things that has been frustrating and
many of the urban neighborhoods which have redeveloped,
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is that they have both triggered displacement
on one hand, and that the
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equity that goes into the neighborhood to
improve it and that benefits from price appreciation
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comes from outside the neighborhood. So
it is the degree to which you're able
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to retain the wealth creation that comes
from things getting better inside the neighborhood itself
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and with the residence of the neighborhood
who were there previously some of it.
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Then, if it's not about the
ability to recapture the wealth, bridge the
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home ownership gap, build the equity
in the community has to do with just
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making sure that for those folks who
don't participate in the growth and home prices
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as an example, that they don't
get displaced. And we have been able
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to do some interest things there through
helping a couple of our neighborhoods establish these
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community trusts which then acquire the property
that gets redeveloped and allows them to control
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and to essentially endow that community with
permanently affordable housing and then to create a
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source of cash for the community to
invest in other areas. And then I
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think lastly, what is interesting about
many of the neighborhoods we've chosen is they're
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proximate to major employers or the central
business district, and so you want to
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see more participation in the jobs that
are available in the immediate area or in
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the purchasing that's available in the immediate
area. We have a hospital partner in
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one of the neighborhoods who's just done
an outstanding job of looking at everything that
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they buy and saying what can we
buy from neighbors like literally people living in
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two to three mile radius around the
hospital campus. And then I think lastly,
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it's education and it's achievement rates.
And our role as a bank is
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to be a provider of equity in
some cases, to be a lender in
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some cases, and to use our
influence in the community because of the business
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relationships we have or the relationships we
have with the local politicians, to be
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a convener and to bring attention to
the issues and the opportunities, and to
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get the right group of voices around
the table to work directly with the residents
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to be able to drive change.
And I want to remind our audience you're
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listening to Tim Spence, a CEO's
commitment thriving communities drive corporate success. Tim
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is the fifth thirds President, CEO
and board director. The topics we cover
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like today's are all current, and
a new topic with a new game changer
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00:21:57.799 --> 00:22:03.680
is released every month. It's a
great way to stay current on relevant issues
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that are happening around us. Now
let's return to Tim Spence. So these
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economic development models you're driving are truly
innovative and in so many different ways,
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and you're putting the power in the
hands of the citizens. So is there
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anything that this audience can take away
and do in their own communities, or
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how we can work more with our
local banks such as yours. You know,
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I think that there are probably two
things. The first and most important
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thing that you can do if you
want to help is to listen to the
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people that you want to help,
and that's part of that is making sure
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that they feel like they need it. And part of that is I think
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I've learned from many of these neighborhoods
that our perspective as an outsider looking in
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on what needed to change, if
oftentimes we had the right list of items
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but we didn't understand and the priority
the way that the residents in the neighborhood
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understand the priority. So the initial
impetus certainly as a corporate partner, is
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to kind of part you know,
I'm mister Smith, and I'm in from
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Washington and here to help, and
that is the wrong way to approach these
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problems. The second thing is to
recognize that if the issues in the community
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that you're working in, we're with, we're easy to fix, they would
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have been fixed right. There's been
no shortage of effort in a lot of
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places. But what you find is
that the issues are really systemic issues.
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And when you recognize that, it
both changes your perspective on how committed you
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need to be. Right in our
case, I think it's really caused us
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to think we agreed that we were
going to spend three years working on ten
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neighborhoods as part of this neighborhood program, it's probably going to be more like
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five years by the time we're done
here. And it may not be five,
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it may be more than that,
because I certainly was overly optimistic about
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the pace with which we could address
some of the more sustained structural issues.
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You know, And at one and
two, when you recognize that the problem
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is hard, the fact that you
may not have immediate success is you know,
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easier to pale it because you don't
undo fifty years of exclusion in a
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week or a month or a year, or as I mentioned, as I've
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learned in three years. So you
know, I've heard from your staff that
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they have to have running shoes to
keep up with you. And so you
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know, part of this is what
you're talking about, is that you want
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things to accelerate quicker. And at
fifth Third you've had many first over its
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hundred and sixty year history. So
what are you looking to drive to continue
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to be a leader. What's going
to be important for you in the strategy
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going forward? So thanks for mentioning
it. You're right, you wouldn't think
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that bank headquartered in the Midwest that
as recently as thirty or forty years ago
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was a few billion dollars. And
you know a handful of cities would have
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been as involved in the development of
a lot of the technology that we just
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sort of take for granted in the
banking system today. But it was I
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we have a little corporate museum that
we built in this beautiful atrium that my
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predecessor invested in, that we use
primarily to teach employees our history. But
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I sneak down there every once in
a while, and I watched the videos
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because you know, you watch a
wall being taken out in the building so
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that they could use a crane to
move computing machines in, or you hear
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the stories about the you know,
Fifth Third invented the first online ATM network
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in the US, but we didn't
have the site to understand how much cash
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would be required, so one of
our it people literally had to stand in
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the cabinet behind the ATM and keep
feeding the canister with new bills as the
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money came out. But I say
that both because it sort of explains why
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the company has been as proactive as
it has been to adopt new technology.
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But also I try to remind our
people that a big part of innovation is
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just the willingness to like put something
into the world and figure it out right
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and to make it work. And
that's hard inside a large company, in
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part because you have this responsibility to
all of your existing clients. Like if
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I'm starting business from scratch and I
put a product out and it doesn't work
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that well, the only people it
impacts are the handful of folks who bought
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it before I figure it out.
But a Fifth third makes a change to
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our mobile app, or we change
a fraud rule and it impacts card authorizations
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on you know, a Friday afternoon, which is a payday. It impacts
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millions of people immediately out of the
gate. So you have to be more
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thoughtful about what you put out in
the world. But that doesn't mean that
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you can't find ways to be innovated. So I, you know, I
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tell our people all the time,
you want to grow it organically and take
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market share in a mature and highly
competitive market, which ours is with you
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know, four thousand banks or something
like that across the US. You have
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to do something differently. If you
just do what everybody else is doing,
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you get one four thousandth of a
share, or if there are fifty banks
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in your market, one fiftieth of
the share. So we do expect,
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as a matter of course of doing
business that people step back and evaluate the
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product said, evaluate the sales and
service channels, and challenge themselves to say,
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is there anybody been doing this better? I, in fact myself every
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week I have a multi hour slot
that's blocked out, and I get I
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walk the walls and do a teardown
on one of fourteen different products or critical
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focus products inside the company that we've
identified, and then one of fourteen critical
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value streams as we call them,
these end to end processes that cut across
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our organization, and those things are
selected based on the role they play in
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our customers lives. So we're very
focused a relationship bank on the stuff you've
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got to do as a business or
a consumer every day or up to as
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frequently as one month, and we
want to be the company that does the
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best job of helping you solve those
issues or take advantage of those opportunities like
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completely, not a little bit or
given you a tool you can use to
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do the job. We want the
tools to do the job before you,
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if they can. And so you
have to be really deliberate as a leader
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about the way in which you not
only set that expectation and explain to people
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why it's important, but then again
back to our prior conversation about what you
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expect from leaders, about the way
that you inspect the progress on an ongoing
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basis, and that as a leader, you're willing to take some of the
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risk supposed to just letting people loose
and then challenging when things don't work out.
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Yeah, so your leadership is a
lot about the why, Why are
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we doing these things right? Why
will this make an impact on our customers?
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Is that important for all of your
leaders throughout the organization in terms of
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how they approach their jobs every day? And when you talk about technology,
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is technology to further enable them in
terms of the why and then the how
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and the why? I think they
is like a non negotiable in a modern
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business environment. Very fond of book. It was Neil Ferguson who wrote it.
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He's a British historian. That is
called It's Something to the Tune of
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the Tower in the Square, but
it basically describes throughout history this ongoing battle
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between networks and hierarchies. And his
basic argument was that networks, if you
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just look at the sweep of history, always beat out hierarchies in terms of
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organizational models. But then ironically the
networks then tend to metastasize into hierarchies themselves
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and they get toppled again later.
So in my own personal experience, network
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teams, that is flat organizations where
you have a broader base of empowerment,
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are able to move faster and are
able to pivot more nimbly and do a
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better job of understanding what the customer
need is and or how to address a
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specific financial issue or opportunity that materializes
better than traditional hierarchical organizations. But if
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you're going to get you're going to
run in a flat model. The leaders
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across the top of that organization all
have to be keenly bought into and understand
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the implications of why you're doing things, because if they don't understand the why,
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if they just understand the what,
then the only way that you can
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really get an organization to be coordinated
and to make a concerned impact is by
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just telling them how to do what
they need to do, which puts you
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back into more of a hierarchical sort
of a structure. So I think the
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why is just practically necessary to run
a flat organization. I also think it's
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in a world where people want purpose
out of their work. If you don't
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understand the why, you're kind of
purposeless and being purposeless as you know,
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as a miserable it's a miserable idea, you know. So it sounds to
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me like your employees, if they
know the why, they're going to feel
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really empowered to go ahead and make
those decisions, and then responsibility is delegated
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to the lowest possible level because you, to expense is CEO can't really be
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in all places at all times,
Right, do need your people to act
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focused on that customer and so you're
giving them that information. Yeah, but
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plus I'm wrong a lot, and
I want us to be right as a
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company much more frequently than I'm going
to be right as an individual. Well,
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you had maniac related So let me
ask what are you most proud of
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and why is this important to you
in terms of the bank, your employees,
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and the communities. I am most
proud at the end of the day
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the impact that we get to have
out in the world. I think.
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I love the fact that the bank
under my predecessor really underwent an incredible transformation.
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We derisk the company. We did
a series of very hard things to
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create one of the most profitable banks
of our size and to invest strategically in
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either capabilities or markets that are going
to really support continue to support our growth.
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And I'm really proud of all those
things. I like the fact that
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we're profitable. I like the fact
that we're viewed as being one of the
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most stable and trusted banks, and
I love getting to see the organic growth.
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But you know, we're twenty thousand
people, and those twenty thousand people
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all live in markets where we operate, or at least if there are a
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few of the don't. It's a
limited number of those. And as I
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said earlier, our successfully as a
function of how well we support those communities.
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So every year, on the third
of May, which happens to be
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five slash three on the calendar,
we celebrate fifth third Day and we focus
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on food insecurity. On that day
we feed. We're going to feed ten
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million people across the footprint that this
May. So it's a big impact from
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the fundraising we do that day,
the food packing we do, and otherwise.
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But the thing I enjoy more is, you know, reminding our people
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of the broader impact that they make
throughout the year. Our employees donated about
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one hundred and twenty thousand hours of
volunteer time last year. They sit on
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something like eleven hundred and fifty nonprofit
or education boards across the footprint, and
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they touch our customers lives and really
personal matters on a day in, day
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out basis. You know, over
the course of the year and just one
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simple example of how that manifested itself. At the front end of the COVID
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lockdowns, you know, we have
about eight and a half of our twenty
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thousand people in the branches were out
in the field, and then another few
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thousand folks in our operations centers,
and those folks, for good reason,
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we're deemed essential workers. And I
personally was wrestling at the onset of the
404
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lockdown with how to explain to folks
why it was unsafe for the people who
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worked in our office towers to come
into the office when the but safe for
406
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them and necessary for them out in
the field. And it dawned on me,
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actually on a long run, that
what we had to do was to
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help them to understand why they were
essential, right, the fact that they
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were really frontline heroes, maybe not
to the extent that somebody who worked in
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00:36:42.440 --> 00:36:46.880
a hospital was, certainly, but
that they were there to provide an essential
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service that allowed people's lives to go
on. So I challenged our folks in
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our retail branches to make a million
calls in the first week of the lockdown
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to customer just to check in on
them and make sure they were all right.
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And then We took our strategy team
and our marketing team offline and had
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them focus on building out a resource
guide that included detail on all of the
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social services, all of the government
lending support programs, and any other support
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services that we could think of that
were relevant in the community. Not Fifth
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Third programs because we had those developed, but the things that were available to
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everybody else. And our frontline folks
didn't make one million calls. They made
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three million calls they think a matter
of a few weeks. And they went
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into their own pockets in some cases
because they would get a customer on the
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phone who was stuck at home,
whose primary caregiver wasn't able to get to
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them, who was out of food
and toiletries, and they literally sent people
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out from the branches to buy groceries
and drop them off at the house.
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They help people navigate, you know, what could be confusing forms. And
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the largest consumer sentiment company, Consumer
Surveyor, and the US ran three surveys
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during COVID where they asked people across
the country what financial institution did the best
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job of supporting you through the pandemic
and Fifth Third swept. We were number
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one of the twenty five largest institutions
and all three of those surveys, and
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that is the thing I'm most I'm
most proud of. Oh that's incredible.
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You know that really talks about and
addresses the need for trust, doesn't it
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in terms of you trust your financial
institution, But you really are talking about
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trust in the people because it's it's
all people that make up you know,
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the organization, right, So you've
really built, and Greg Carmichael as well,
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an organization a financial institution that when
you have surveys like that and you
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come out number one during the pandemic, people turn to you. So I
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really commend you on what you're doing
for communities throughout the country, and I
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know you're going to expand that.
So I wanted to ask if you have
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any parting words for our audience in
terms of where you see the future of
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financial institutions, what the impact you
want to make. I know you make.
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You're a runner, so you think
a lot about solving problems on your
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runs. So what do you think
of the future for financial institutions in this
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country and building trust for society?
We're in for you said it at the
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outset at interesting times here for a
while because our financial system is large,
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and it is interrelated, and I
think in an environment like that, we've
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kind of had seen the pendulum swing
in the last twenty four months from crypto
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and this notion of decentralized finance and
trust lest finance being the hot topic to
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a world now where we're talking about
too big to fail financial institutions as being
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the only place where you can trust. I think I am of the belief
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that it is not the capital markets
that made the US economy so innovative and
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so great over the course of the
past two hundred years. It is,
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in fact the fact that we had
a decentralized banking system, because one hundred
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and fifty years ago, you know, if you were somebody with an idea
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in Dayton, Ohio, in our
footprint, or in Wilmington, North Carolina,
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the place you went to get investment
was not the New York Stock Exchange,
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it was the local bank. And
I continue to believe that the US
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model of banking, even though it
is occasionally going to be a little bit
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bumpier, is superior to a consolidated
model of banking like you would see in
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Europe, where you know, in
any given market, call it five banks
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each have twenty percent market share or
ten banks each have ten percent market share.
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It's supportive of dynamism, it's supportive
of capital flows going to the right
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places. So when I talk to
the policymakers in Washington certainly, and when
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I talk to our community partners and
our own customers directly, that is the
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thing that I spend a lot of
time on is we don't want to solve
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short term problems and create long term
ones. We want to solve short term
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problems with solutions that are designed to
promote, you know, an efficient allocation
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of capital, credit availability everywhere where
it can be extended viably, and competition
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that supports you know, sort of
sustained product innovation and service innovation. And
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so that that I think is the
thing that I think a lot about is
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how do we, as a large
regional bank, as a dominant player in
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our markets, be an agent for
constructive change, whether that's as an advocate
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for the regulatory framework that supports a
better long term market structure, or in
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some cases just as the disruptor right
who's challenging the status quo with new and
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better ways to operate, and as
a source of strength for people even though
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we you know that our bank is
denominated only in the hundreds of billions as
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opposed to end the trillions when you
look at the assets on our balance.
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And this has been such an inspirational
discussion, and i'd commend you, the
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board, your employees at Fifth Third
for really listening to people in communities in
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terms of what's needed. And before
the fifth year, we will come back
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and see the progress that has been
made because you truly are impacting people's lives
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and society and really making us less
of a pay gaps of wealth gap,
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00:43:29.559 --> 00:43:36.280
more equality for all. So Tim
Spence, CEO, Director of President of
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00:43:36.440 --> 00:43:40.159
Fifth Third Bankcorp, thank you for
joining us today and sharing an incredible story
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00:43:40.639 --> 00:43:47.840
about a CEO's commitment driving communities success. Thanks. Yes, it's really been
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00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:52.440
phenomenal. And to our audience,
thank you for joining us today for this
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00:43:52.559 --> 00:43:59.119
game changing conversation on leadership reimagined.
And you can find me on Twitter,
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00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:04.000
LinkedIn, visit our website at ellengroup
dot com. So thank you all for
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00:44:04.079 --> 00:44:07.519
joining us and Tim Spence again,
thank you for a great discussion
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00:00:16.679 --> 00:00:22.879
Welcome to Leadership Reimagined, where game
changing conversations are reshaping the world of work.
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00:00:23.239 --> 00:00:27.719
I'm Janaceli, the CEO and founder
of LA Group, Executive Search Advisors,
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00:00:28.039 --> 00:00:33.679
where we are reimagining search through our
longstanding commitment to diversity, equity and
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00:00:33.759 --> 00:00:40.719
inclusion. On today's topic, a
CEO's commitment thriving communities drive corporate success.
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00:00:41.119 --> 00:00:46.200
I am delighted to welcome Tim Spence, President, CEO and Director of Fifth
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Third Corp, a top twenty bank
by assets before being named CEO in twenty
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twenty two and President in twenty twenty. Tim joined Fifth Third in twenty fifteen
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as Chief stragg Officer and later became
head of Consumer Bank, responsible for Fifth
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Thirds retail banking, mortgage, auto, specialty lending and payments, as well
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as key strategic growth capabilities such as
digital marketing and fintech partnerships. Prior to
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joining Fifth Third, Tim was a
senior partner in the financial services practice at
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Oliver Wyman, recognized for his innovative
vision in its significantly advancing Fifth Thirds digital
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transformation. In twenty eighteen, American
Banker honored Tim as Digital Banker of the
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Year. Tim believes that banks like
fifth third can be a catalyst for positive
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change in communities, and he demonstrates
this through his service to various higher education
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and economic development organizations in Ohio and
beyond. Tim is a founding member of
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Fifth Thirds Enterprise University Leadership Council,
established in twenty twenty, and he's executive
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sponsor of the African American Business Resource
Group. During these very busy times for
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banks, Tim, I'm delighted you
could join us today. Thanks, Janna,
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it's great to be here. Well, these are interesting times, and
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I want to talk a little bit
about your leadership and some of those interesting
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facts that I've read about in terms
of your upbringing and what might have contributed
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to your success today. So I've
read that you learn to code in the
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first grade. You grew up breaking
apart and reassembling electronics such as toasters and
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computers. Your dad was a financial
planner with ubs and he taught you how
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to read financial statements at an early
age, and that you set an ongoing
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goal to read twenty pages a day, and you're a runner. So are
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these some of the drivers that got
you to be the youngest CEO of a
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top ten bank in the US at
the age of forty three. Thanks for
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the question, and it's funny to
reflect back on all those things. I
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think, in particular in times like
the one that we find ourselves in,
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I at least become very appreciative of
the experience that I had for so many
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years, including experiences that maybe didn't
seem like they were going to be relevant
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to the future, where all of
a sudden you find yourself looking back and
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a lesson. I mean, narrowly
to your question about what got me to
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where I am career wise, I
actually don't think it's any of those things.
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I think it's people. I had
people at several hard forks in my
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life, whether they were educational forks
or character defining forks or career forks,
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who nudged me in one direction or
another. You know, folks who took
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a risk on hiring me, including
the person who hired me at all of
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women actually overrule the other partners on
the interview slate, or folks like our
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prior Ceo, greg and Carmichael,
who gave me the opportunity here but constantly
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pushed me to get what I needed
to get done in a given area done.
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In a period of twenty four months
and to get the right talent in
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behind me so that I could go
on to the next thing. And as
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I look back on my own career, it is absolutely invariably it's those people
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that really got me to wear it
was. Now that said, I do
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think all of the other things that
you mentioned are are important. I mean
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I have always been curious, and
I was fortunate to grow up in a
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house where it was okay to break
stuff as long as you could figure out
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I put it back together. I
think that taught me to understand how things
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work. Maybe at a different level
I did learn. I mean I was
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an internal basic, so it was
a very basic coding and then you know,
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through computer science courses in college and
otherwise learned a series of things that
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would be the digital equivalent of the
Rosetta stone today in terms of dead programming
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languages. But they were valuable because
they forced you to be able to express
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your thought in a different language,
right and absolutely when I had I had
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a decent run at the age of
twelve or thirteen mowing neighbor's lawns, and
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my dad thought it would be a
good idea at that age to teach me
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how to read a financial statement so
that I can start investing money depending it
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on stuff and all of those things
along with what I get out of the
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books. The books are as much
as anything a stress relief tool. But
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they're frames, right, They're like
holding an empty picture frame up to the
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world and you can kind of pick
what frame you look at a problem through.
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And when you do that at and
you have a good collection of frames,
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it causes you to see the world
in different ways. We've all probably
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had that experience if we framed a
piece of art that we have hanging on
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the wall, like the right frame
makes the painting, So that those things
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are valuable, especially in times of
uncertainty, in helping to triangulate a strategic
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course or a course of action.
Obviously, some of these things that you
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grew up with did shape who you
are today, right in terms of that
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intellectual curiosity. So I'm just going
to talk a little bit about your leadership.
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What do you look for in leaders
coming in? Is it that intellectual
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curiosity, particularly when you know,
like we are doing very difficult times right
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now. Being able to pivot and
being agile really important in decision making.
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So what do you look for in
your leaders You know, that's a great
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question. I think at the most
fundamental level, there are three things that
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you look for in leaders. Certainly
that I one is the ability to set
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vision. And by vision, I
don't mean you know, develop a strategic
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plan or a thesis for the way
that a market will play out, although
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that is part of it. It's
the ability to both understand the circumstances at
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a level that allows you to anticipate
future developments, but also then to understand
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yourself and yourself as a leader,
your organization right, the collection of people
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that you're responsible for, and then
the attributes of the business, so that
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you can set a course which includes
the strategic investments, but also the culture
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and the talent model and the operating
rhythms that need to support it. The
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second thing, then is the ability
to get talent right. And that's both
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attracting great people, but it's also
about how you develop great people and how
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you mold great people in teams.
And one of the questions that I like
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to ask groups of people when I
get together inside our company is is this
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a collection of individuals or is it
a team? And you'll find that there
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are some organizations that sort of function
okay, is a collection of individuals,
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it just is not a good model
in a company like ours. So you
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have to have the ability to get
great people. But then you've got to
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be able to get those great people
to believe in something that's bigger than they
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are, and to want to be
part of something that asks them, at
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least at the margin, to subordinate
their own personal motivations for the sake of
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the whole. The last thing,
then, is the ability to drive execution,
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and in particular and a business like
ours, which is very tightly connected
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to the economic cycle and influenced by
factors that are outside your control. Your
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ability to take a plan vision that
you've developed and the collection of people that
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you've gathered to deliver it, and
then to navigate the unexpected changes and to
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be able to adapt and still get
the outcomes that you expect are is a
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unique skill in another well, in
today's world where talent is really at a
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premium. I mean, it is
a supply issue. But you've mentioned in
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the past that people can come to
fifth third and have like eight careers and
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they don't have to leave. How
do you hold on to your people?
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How do you make that happen?
Where they can really want to be there
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and stay with you. Yeah,
you know. I was with one of
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our leaders the other day. She
was celebrating our thirtieth anniversary with the company.
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Wow, many careers have you had
inside the bank? And it was
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more than a dozen, So I
may be shooting too low when I say
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eight. This idea of eight careers
isn't mind. It came from our HR
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folks who told me that the kids
who graduate college these days will probabilistically have
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eight different careers before they get to
retire thirty to forty years into the future.
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And I think in a world where
there are going to be more people
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retiring every year than there are coming
out of high school and college, a
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big part of the game is going
to be finding ways to inspire people with
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the ways in which they can grow
inside our company as opposed to go in
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outside. I mean, some people
may graduate from college and know exactly what
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they wanted to do, but I
certainly was not one of those. Like,
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if you actually sat back and plotted
out my career course, it would
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look more like a random walk through
the forest than it would a straight line.
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Part of the way that you keep
them in that environment is by making
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sure that the opportunities exist to go
through that own that unique personal exploration that
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I think most of us have in
our twenties and thirties, to sort of
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figure out where you have that intersection
of the things that you're passionate about and
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what you're good at. I think
the second thing, which is a little
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bit contrarian, or at least was
the last couple of years, is that
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I am a big believer in the
value of place. I think that we
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are all less aware than we should
be of the impact that the environment has
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on us, and that the impact
that other people have on us. And
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if you create a great place and
you have people in it, great things
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tend to happen. Right, Tenous
things that you didn't expect tend to happen.
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Relationships build that, new connections get
made. That creates career avenues,
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It creates friendships and social bonds.
The office is like one of the last
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places in society where you really do
draw together people from all different backgrounds and
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perspectives and remind them that there are
fundamental beliefs that are shared and a commonality
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of purpose. And I think that
extends beyond just your office building. And
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it also is the way that you
handle what we think of as our campus,
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which is like the area immediately around
our office and the other employers that
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inhabit that space. We did some
things in our Cincinnati headquarters this past fall
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that start to work on creating a
young professionals group that actually cuts across major
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employers here in Cincinnati. And that
was actually born out of one of my
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own experiences and moving to a new
city where I didn't know anybody, you
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know, call it twenty years ago, and in struggling to find people who
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may have shared common interests or otherwise, so I ended up throwing my own
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parties. And if you brought someone, if you were invited, you brought
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somebody that nobody else in the room
knew. You got to eat for free,
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and you didn't have to kick in
to cover the beer in the wine.
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But if anybody else in the room
knew your guests, then you had
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to pay that you know, your
fair share, ye will, And it
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created a network of young people in
that community that wouldn't otherwise have existed.
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And I think that's the same sort
of an idea here as we have to
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be much more focused on the ways
in which we create real networks as opposed
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to sort of add supported social networks. Yeah, we do recruiting for many
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clients. We find that purpose driven
organizations. People are attracted there. They
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want to go someplace almost any age
in today's world. They want to go
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someplace where they're going to have an
impact and feel part of a community that's
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doing good. And I have to
commend you for what you're doing at fifth
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third because you've said, and that's
the topic of today, really, you
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cannot be successful. Organizations can't fifth
third can't be successful unless communities are successful.
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And that I'll quote you too.
Many of our black and brown citizens
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and their neighborhoods have been shut out
or left behind over the course of them
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past many, many decades. So
you, as leader at fifth third end,
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I guess your predecessor as well,
are making significant investments to accelerate that
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equality and community. So tell us
how you're doing that, what this holistic
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approach is, because I think this
is so significant. People want to work
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for organizations that are doing good and
making good at the same time. Yeah,
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you know, I have to give
my predecessor and longtime boss Greg Carmichael
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credit in this area. I mean, I think it's eight years ago now.
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We entered into a community benefits agreement
that, at least to my knowledge,
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is the only community benefits agreement that's
been done in the past decade that
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wasn't tied to getting a merger approval. Greg just did it because he was
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looking at the footprint, and he
was looking at how we wanted to be
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seen as an actor in the community, and it just felt like the right
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thing to do. So that five
year, thirty billion dollar commitment, which
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we later upsized a little bit,
you know, really was the start of
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us thinking differently about the role we
play in our community. I like to
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remind our people, and I'll tell
you this turmoil in the banking sector right
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now is ben probably the strongest reminder
that we've had that banks are only as
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strong as their customers and the communities
where they operate. Like, for every
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ten dollars of loans we make,
if you just look at the banking sector
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balance sheet, about a dollar comes
from shareholders capital and nine dollars comes from
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your customers. Right, it's as
a byproduct of that. If your customers
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have confidence in your company and believe
that you are a constructive member of the
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community where they live, and they
have faith in the bank, then the
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bank's funding base is stable. And
if the people that you're loaning money to
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are making prudent investments, are creating
economic opportunities for a broad cross section and
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the population, and therefore are boosting
employment and savings, then homes get bought
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and community participation. You can actually
see this in the data goes up in
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terms of civic involvement and things go
really well. But if those things are
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not there, if the customers don't
feel vested in the bank, if the
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bank has not been clear about the
connectivity it has in its communities, and
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or if it's attached to communities that
are undergoing significant traction and it's not helping
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them to see a bridge to the
other side, then things can unravel pretty
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quickly. But some of the outcomes
you look at, which are like high
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school graduation rates, more green space
and beautification, I mean, are you
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how are you measuring those outcomes?
How are you what are you looking You're
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making these investments in these communities,
So the outcomes you're looking for, what
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are they? What I think I
would say is that the measure we want
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is vitality. We want communities to
be healthier. In the specific case of
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the investments we've made in some of
the neighborhoods across the footprint, which I
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do think is among the more innovative
things we've done, certainly in that area,
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is how well they function. So
you think about a neighborhood that's healthy,
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like it has a health We just
think about the ones that you visit.
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There's a healthy commercial strip, and
the anchors of that commercial strip are
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generally you say, what needs to
be there. There needs to be fresh
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food, there needs to be financial
services, and generally there needs to be
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urgent care. Right. There are
places where people can meet that are safe
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and common and where they can recreate
together. Right, whether that's green space,
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certainly in the case of our southeastern
markets, it's green space, and
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some of the ones we have in
the Upper Midwest it's more like an enclosed
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community center just given the weather.
But it's common space and then that there
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is participation in the improvement in the
community. Right. I think one of
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the things that has been frustrating and
many of the urban neighborhoods which have redeveloped,
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is that they have both triggered displacement
on one hand, and that the
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equity that goes into the neighborhood to
improve it and that benefits from price appreciation
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comes from outside the neighborhood. So
it is the degree to which you're able
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to retain the wealth creation that comes
from things getting better inside the neighborhood itself
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and with the residence of the neighborhood
who were there previously some of it.
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Then, if it's not about the
ability to recapture the wealth, bridge the
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home ownership gap, build the equity
in the community has to do with just
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making sure that for those folks who
don't participate in the growth and home prices
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as an example, that they don't
get displaced. And we have been able
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to do some interest things there through
helping a couple of our neighborhoods establish these
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community trusts which then acquire the property
that gets redeveloped and allows them to control
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and to essentially endow that community with
permanently affordable housing and then to create a
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source of cash for the community to
invest in other areas. And then I
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think lastly, what is interesting about
many of the neighborhoods we've chosen is they're
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proximate to major employers or the central
business district, and so you want to
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see more participation in the jobs that
are available in the immediate area or in
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the purchasing that's available in the immediate
area. We have a hospital partner in
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one of the neighborhoods who's just done
an outstanding job of looking at everything that
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they buy and saying what can we
buy from neighbors like literally people living in
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two to three mile radius around the
hospital campus. And then I think lastly,
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it's education and it's achievement rates.
And our role as a bank is
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to be a provider of equity in
some cases, to be a lender in
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some cases, and to use our
influence in the community because of the business
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relationships we have or the relationships we
have with the local politicians, to be
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a convener and to bring attention to
the issues and the opportunities, and to
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get the right group of voices around
the table to work directly with the residents
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to be able to drive change.
And I want to remind our audience you're
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listening to Tim Spence, a CEO's
commitment thriving communities drive corporate success. Tim
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is the fifth thirds President, CEO
and board director. The topics we cover
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like today's are all current, and
a new topic with a new game changer
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is released every month. It's a
great way to stay current on relevant issues
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that are happening around us. Now
let's return to Tim Spence. So these
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economic development models you're driving are truly
innovative and in so many different ways,
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and you're putting the power in the
hands of the citizens. So is there
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anything that this audience can take away
and do in their own communities, or
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how we can work more with our
local banks such as yours. You know,
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I think that there are probably two
things. The first and most important
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thing that you can do if you
want to help is to listen to the
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people that you want to help,
and that's part of that is making sure
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that they feel like they need it. And part of that is I think
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I've learned from many of these neighborhoods
that our perspective as an outsider looking in
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on what needed to change, if
oftentimes we had the right list of items
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but we didn't understand and the priority
the way that the residents in the neighborhood
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understand the priority. So the initial
impetus certainly as a corporate partner, is
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to kind of part you know,
I'm mister Smith, and I'm in from
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Washington and here to help, and
that is the wrong way to approach these
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problems. The second thing is to
recognize that if the issues in the community
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that you're working in, we're with, we're easy to fix, they would
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have been fixed right. There's been
no shortage of effort in a lot of
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places. But what you find is
that the issues are really systemic issues.
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And when you recognize that, it
both changes your perspective on how committed you
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need to be. Right in our
case, I think it's really caused us
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to think we agreed that we were
going to spend three years working on ten
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neighborhoods as part of this neighborhood program, it's probably going to be more like
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five years by the time we're done
here. And it may not be five,
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it may be more than that,
because I certainly was overly optimistic about
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the pace with which we could address
some of the more sustained structural issues.
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You know, And at one and
two, when you recognize that the problem
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is hard, the fact that you
may not have immediate success is you know,
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easier to pale it because you don't
undo fifty years of exclusion in a
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week or a month or a year, or as I mentioned, as I've
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learned in three years. So you
know, I've heard from your staff that
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they have to have running shoes to
keep up with you. And so you
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know, part of this is what
you're talking about, is that you want
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things to accelerate quicker. And at
fifth Third you've had many first over its
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hundred and sixty year history. So
what are you looking to drive to continue
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to be a leader. What's going
to be important for you in the strategy
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going forward? So thanks for mentioning
it. You're right, you wouldn't think
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that bank headquartered in the Midwest that
as recently as thirty or forty years ago
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was a few billion dollars. And
you know a handful of cities would have
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been as involved in the development of
a lot of the technology that we just
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sort of take for granted in the
banking system today. But it was I
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we have a little corporate museum that
we built in this beautiful atrium that my
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predecessor invested in, that we use
primarily to teach employees our history. But
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I sneak down there every once in
a while, and I watched the videos
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because you know, you watch a
wall being taken out in the building so
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that they could use a crane to
move computing machines in, or you hear
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the stories about the you know,
Fifth Third invented the first online ATM network
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in the US, but we didn't
have the site to understand how much cash
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would be required, so one of
our it people literally had to stand in
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the cabinet behind the ATM and keep
feeding the canister with new bills as the
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money came out. But I say
that both because it sort of explains why
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the company has been as proactive as
it has been to adopt new technology.
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But also I try to remind our
people that a big part of innovation is
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just the willingness to like put something
into the world and figure it out right
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and to make it work. And
that's hard inside a large company, in
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part because you have this responsibility to
all of your existing clients. Like if
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I'm starting business from scratch and I
put a product out and it doesn't work
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that well, the only people it
impacts are the handful of folks who bought
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it before I figure it out.
But a Fifth third makes a change to
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our mobile app, or we change
a fraud rule and it impacts card authorizations
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on you know, a Friday afternoon, which is a payday. It impacts
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millions of people immediately out of the
gate. So you have to be more
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thoughtful about what you put out in
the world. But that doesn't mean that
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you can't find ways to be innovated. So I, you know, I
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tell our people all the time,
you want to grow it organically and take
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market share in a mature and highly
competitive market, which ours is with you
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know, four thousand banks or something
like that across the US. You have
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to do something differently. If you
just do what everybody else is doing,
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you get one four thousandth of a
share, or if there are fifty banks
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in your market, one fiftieth of
the share. So we do expect,
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as a matter of course of doing
business that people step back and evaluate the
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product said, evaluate the sales and
service channels, and challenge themselves to say,
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is there anybody been doing this better? I, in fact myself every
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week I have a multi hour slot
that's blocked out, and I get I
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walk the walls and do a teardown
on one of fourteen different products or critical
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focus products inside the company that we've
identified, and then one of fourteen critical
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value streams as we call them,
these end to end processes that cut across
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our organization, and those things are
selected based on the role they play in
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our customers lives. So we're very
focused a relationship bank on the stuff you've
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got to do as a business or
a consumer every day or up to as
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frequently as one month, and we
want to be the company that does the
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best job of helping you solve those
issues or take advantage of those opportunities like
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completely, not a little bit or
given you a tool you can use to
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do the job. We want the
tools to do the job before you,
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if they can. And so you
have to be really deliberate as a leader
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about the way in which you not
only set that expectation and explain to people
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why it's important, but then again
back to our prior conversation about what you
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expect from leaders, about the way
that you inspect the progress on an ongoing
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basis, and that as a leader, you're willing to take some of the
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risk supposed to just letting people loose
and then challenging when things don't work out.
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Yeah, so your leadership is a
lot about the why, Why are
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we doing these things right? Why
will this make an impact on our customers?
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Is that important for all of your
leaders throughout the organization in terms of
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how they approach their jobs every day? And when you talk about technology,
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is technology to further enable them in
terms of the why and then the how
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and the why? I think they
is like a non negotiable in a modern
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business environment. Very fond of book. It was Neil Ferguson who wrote it.
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He's a British historian. That is
called It's Something to the Tune of
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the Tower in the Square, but
it basically describes throughout history this ongoing battle
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between networks and hierarchies. And his
basic argument was that networks, if you
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just look at the sweep of history, always beat out hierarchies in terms of
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organizational models. But then ironically the
networks then tend to metastasize into hierarchies themselves
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and they get toppled again later.
So in my own personal experience, network
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teams, that is flat organizations where
you have a broader base of empowerment,
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are able to move faster and are
able to pivot more nimbly and do a
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better job of understanding what the customer
need is and or how to address a
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specific financial issue or opportunity that materializes
better than traditional hierarchical organizations. But if
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you're going to get you're going to
run in a flat model. The leaders
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across the top of that organization all
have to be keenly bought into and understand
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the implications of why you're doing things, because if they don't understand the why,
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if they just understand the what,
then the only way that you can
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really get an organization to be coordinated
and to make a concerned impact is by
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just telling them how to do what
they need to do, which puts you
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back into more of a hierarchical sort
of a structure. So I think the
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why is just practically necessary to run
a flat organization. I also think it's
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in a world where people want purpose
out of their work. If you don't
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understand the why, you're kind of
purposeless and being purposeless as you know,
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as a miserable it's a miserable idea, you know. So it sounds to
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me like your employees, if they
know the why, they're going to feel
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really empowered to go ahead and make
those decisions, and then responsibility is delegated
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to the lowest possible level because you, to expense is CEO can't really be
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in all places at all times,
Right, do need your people to act
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focused on that customer and so you're
giving them that information. Yeah, but
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plus I'm wrong a lot, and
I want us to be right as a
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company much more frequently than I'm going
to be right as an individual. Well,
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you had maniac related So let me
ask what are you most proud of
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and why is this important to you
in terms of the bank, your employees,
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and the communities. I am most
proud at the end of the day
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the impact that we get to have
out in the world. I think.
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I love the fact that the bank
under my predecessor really underwent an incredible transformation.
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We derisk the company. We did
a series of very hard things to
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create one of the most profitable banks
of our size and to invest strategically in
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either capabilities or markets that are going
to really support continue to support our growth.
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And I'm really proud of all those
things. I like the fact that
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we're profitable. I like the fact
that we're viewed as being one of the
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most stable and trusted banks, and
I love getting to see the organic growth.
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But you know, we're twenty thousand
people, and those twenty thousand people
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all live in markets where we operate, or at least if there are a
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few of the don't. It's a
limited number of those. And as I
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said earlier, our successfully as a
function of how well we support those communities.
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So every year, on the third
of May, which happens to be
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five slash three on the calendar,
we celebrate fifth third Day and we focus
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on food insecurity. On that day
we feed. We're going to feed ten
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million people across the footprint that this
May. So it's a big impact from
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the fundraising we do that day,
the food packing we do, and otherwise.
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But the thing I enjoy more is, you know, reminding our people
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of the broader impact that they make
throughout the year. Our employees donated about
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one hundred and twenty thousand hours of
volunteer time last year. They sit on
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something like eleven hundred and fifty nonprofit
or education boards across the footprint, and
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they touch our customers lives and really
personal matters on a day in, day
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out basis. You know, over
the course of the year and just one
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simple example of how that manifested itself. At the front end of the COVID
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lockdowns, you know, we have
about eight and a half of our twenty
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thousand people in the branches were out
in the field, and then another few
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thousand folks in our operations centers,
and those folks, for good reason,
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we're deemed essential workers. And I
personally was wrestling at the onset of the
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lockdown with how to explain to folks
why it was unsafe for the people who
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worked in our office towers to come
into the office when the but safe for
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them and necessary for them out in
the field. And it dawned on me,
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actually on a long run, that
what we had to do was to
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help them to understand why they were
essential, right, the fact that they
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were really frontline heroes, maybe not
to the extent that somebody who worked in
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a hospital was, certainly, but
that they were there to provide an essential
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service that allowed people's lives to go
on. So I challenged our folks in
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our retail branches to make a million
calls in the first week of the lockdown
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to customer just to check in on
them and make sure they were all right.
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And then We took our strategy team
and our marketing team offline and had
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them focus on building out a resource
guide that included detail on all of the
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social services, all of the government
lending support programs, and any other support
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services that we could think of that
were relevant in the community. Not Fifth
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Third programs because we had those developed, but the things that were available to
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everybody else. And our frontline folks
didn't make one million calls. They made
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three million calls they think a matter
of a few weeks. And they went
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into their own pockets in some cases
because they would get a customer on the
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phone who was stuck at home,
whose primary caregiver wasn't able to get to
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them, who was out of food
and toiletries, and they literally sent people
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out from the branches to buy groceries
and drop them off at the house.
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They help people navigate, you know, what could be confusing forms. And
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the largest consumer sentiment company, Consumer
Surveyor, and the US ran three surveys
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during COVID where they asked people across
the country what financial institution did the best
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job of supporting you through the pandemic
and Fifth Third swept. We were number
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one of the twenty five largest institutions
and all three of those surveys, and
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that is the thing I'm most I'm
most proud of. Oh that's incredible.
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You know that really talks about and
addresses the need for trust, doesn't it
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in terms of you trust your financial
institution, But you really are talking about
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trust in the people because it's it's
all people that make up you know,
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the organization, right, So you've
really built, and Greg Carmichael as well,
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an organization a financial institution that when
you have surveys like that and you
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come out number one during the pandemic, people turn to you. So I
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really commend you on what you're doing
for communities throughout the country, and I
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know you're going to expand that.
So I wanted to ask if you have
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00:39:08.519 --> 00:39:15.000
any parting words for our audience in
terms of where you see the future of
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00:39:15.039 --> 00:39:17.679
financial institutions, what the impact you
want to make. I know you make.
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00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:22.159
You're a runner, so you think
a lot about solving problems on your
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runs. So what do you think
of the future for financial institutions in this
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country and building trust for society?
We're in for you said it at the
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outset at interesting times here for a
while because our financial system is large,
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and it is interrelated, and I
think in an environment like that, we've
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kind of had seen the pendulum swing
in the last twenty four months from crypto
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and this notion of decentralized finance and
trust lest finance being the hot topic to
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00:40:02.039 --> 00:40:08.119
a world now where we're talking about
too big to fail financial institutions as being
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the only place where you can trust. I think I am of the belief
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that it is not the capital markets
that made the US economy so innovative and
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so great over the course of the
past two hundred years. It is,
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in fact the fact that we had
a decentralized banking system, because one hundred
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and fifty years ago, you know, if you were somebody with an idea
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in Dayton, Ohio, in our
footprint, or in Wilmington, North Carolina,
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the place you went to get investment
was not the New York Stock Exchange,
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it was the local bank. And
I continue to believe that the US
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model of banking, even though it
is occasionally going to be a little bit
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00:41:04.519 --> 00:41:09.480
bumpier, is superior to a consolidated
model of banking like you would see in
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Europe, where you know, in
any given market, call it five banks
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00:41:14.719 --> 00:41:19.760
each have twenty percent market share or
ten banks each have ten percent market share.
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00:41:20.079 --> 00:41:24.920
It's supportive of dynamism, it's supportive
of capital flows going to the right
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00:41:25.480 --> 00:41:31.440
places. So when I talk to
the policymakers in Washington certainly, and when
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00:41:31.480 --> 00:41:37.440
I talk to our community partners and
our own customers directly, that is the
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00:41:37.440 --> 00:41:40.679
thing that I spend a lot of
time on is we don't want to solve
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short term problems and create long term
ones. We want to solve short term
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problems with solutions that are designed to
promote, you know, an efficient allocation
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00:41:55.760 --> 00:42:06.119
of capital, credit availability everywhere where
it can be extended viably, and competition
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00:42:06.199 --> 00:42:13.280
that supports you know, sort of
sustained product innovation and service innovation. And
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so that that I think is the
thing that I think a lot about is
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how do we, as a large
regional bank, as a dominant player in
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our markets, be an agent for
constructive change, whether that's as an advocate
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00:42:30.119 --> 00:42:37.519
for the regulatory framework that supports a
better long term market structure, or in
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00:42:37.559 --> 00:42:42.320
some cases just as the disruptor right
who's challenging the status quo with new and
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00:42:42.360 --> 00:42:47.719
better ways to operate, and as
a source of strength for people even though
475
00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:53.119
we you know that our bank is
denominated only in the hundreds of billions as
476
00:42:53.119 --> 00:42:58.880
opposed to end the trillions when you
look at the assets on our balance.
477
00:42:59.000 --> 00:43:04.800
And this has been such an inspirational
discussion, and i'd commend you, the
478
00:43:04.840 --> 00:43:10.159
board, your employees at Fifth Third
for really listening to people in communities in
479
00:43:10.280 --> 00:43:15.199
terms of what's needed. And before
the fifth year, we will come back
480
00:43:15.239 --> 00:43:20.760
and see the progress that has been
made because you truly are impacting people's lives
481
00:43:20.800 --> 00:43:28.880
and society and really making us less
of a pay gaps of wealth gap,
482
00:43:29.559 --> 00:43:36.280
more equality for all. So Tim
Spence, CEO, Director of President of
483
00:43:36.440 --> 00:43:40.159
Fifth Third Bankcorp, thank you for
joining us today and sharing an incredible story
484
00:43:40.639 --> 00:43:47.840
about a CEO's commitment driving communities success. Thanks. Yes, it's really been
485
00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:52.440
phenomenal. And to our audience,
thank you for joining us today for this
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00:43:52.559 --> 00:43:59.119
game changing conversation on leadership reimagined.
And you can find me on Twitter,
487
00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:04.000
LinkedIn, visit our website at ellengroup
dot com. So thank you all for
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00:44:04.079 --> 00:44:07.519
joining us and Tim Spence again,
thank you for a great discussion
