Fifth Third Bank’s tech spend in Q1 hit $101 million, a 9% year-over-year increase, and the bank offered insights into its technology and investment outlook during its earnings call today.

Analysts raised questions about the $211 billion bank’s technology strategy on the call, but Tim Spence, president and incoming chief executive at the Cincinnati-based bank, said that Fifth Third’s technology campaign is making “good progress.”

“Think about the investments that we have been making,” Spence said. “One is the core infrastructure. We talked a lot about data centers, we talked a lot about the cloud data strategy, we talked a lot about information security.

“We are seeing the bloom coming from many of the investments we’ve made in digital capabilities,” he added.

Technology is an area where Fifth Third will “look to differentiate” moving forward, and Spence projected confidence on the bank’s shift from legacy banking platforms.

“I think we feel very good about the migration away from legacy mainframe platforms, and on to platforms that allow us to spend a lot more of our money on new application development as opposed to maintenance and service,” Spence said. He added that the bank’s “change the bank, run the bank” tech spend will adopt a 65/35 split in the future.

Data centers and fintech investments

Fifth Third plans to reduce data operations to two data centers and will use open-source cloud development to allow for a reduction in customer-facing applications, said current Chief Executive Greg Carmichael.

“Less applications on the customer-facing side of the house, somewhat less applications on the back-end as we consolidate some of our platforms, and definitely less vendors,” Carmichael said.

Bank executives also touted several fintech acquisitions during the call, including the June 2021 acquisition of health care fintech Provide and the January 2022 acquisition of sustainability fintech Dividend Finance. Fifth Third’s acquisition of Provide enabled the fintech to bring “five to six” new products to market in the first six months, Spence noted.

Commercial banking revenues for the bank fell to $135 million, a 12% decline YoY. Card and processing revenues grew 3% YoY to $97 million and wealth and asset management revenues reached $149 million, a 4% increase YoY.

Shares of Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB) are trading at $40.79 as of market close, up 4.40% from market open.

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