Fifth Third Bank is using AI to streamline customer communications, payment reminders, data extraction and loan approvals. 

The $294 billion bank has increased right party contact (RPC) rates by 30% with its AI voice agent that gives payment reminders, Senior Vice President and Director of AI Model Development Jay Budzik told FinAi News at Fintech Meetup in Las Vegas on March 31.  

RPC rates measure the percentage of outbound calls that reach the intended recipient, according to LexisNexis Risk Solutions.  

Using AI for payment reminders could reduce delinquencies and prevent credit blemishes for consumers, Budzik said. 

The growing capabilities of voice agents overall create substantial opportunities for banks because they supplement “the number of hours that a banker can spend with a client, either on the phone or a one-on-one interaction at a branch,” he said.  

“AI offers us that opportunity because now we can scale the expertise of our personal bankers,” he said. “We can scale the expertise of our wealth managers and make [AI agents] available 24/7 to everyone, all at once.” 

AI at Fifth Third 

Other AI-driven improvements at Cincinnati-based Fifth Third, Budzik said, include: 

• Up to 99% accuracy in extracting structured data from unstructured documents;
• A 40% increase in engineering efficiency; and
• A 15% to 20% jump in home equity loan approvals without increasing default risk. 

Fifth Third also plans to provide instant answers for at least 80% of customer questions with AI, Budzik said. 

Moreover, AI has been crucial for risk management and compliance operations, he said.  

“The bank has been very forward in terms of first establishing an AI policy and then fitting the AI use into existing risk management practices and procedures.”

— Jay Budzik, SVP, Fifth Third Bank

Build versus buy 

Fifth Third joins other big banks evaluating build-versus-buy decisions for AI tools. 

Partnering with vendors makes sense when banks “want to offer a service to the consumers that’s not really core to our business, but that benefits them,” Budzik said. 

The bank’s partnership with Trust & Will, which handles trusts, wills and guardianship documents, is one example, he said. 

Third-party AI providers are particularly useful for specific, specialized tasks “like talking to a customer on the phone, which requires really low latency and a lot of domain expertise in a particular kind of conversation flow,” he said. 

However, fintechs must understand the highly regulated nature of the banking industry for Fifth Third to consider working with them, Budzik said.  

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