Fifth Third Says FinTechs Drove Loan Growth in Slow Market

Fifth Third Bancorp saw its investments in tech-enabled products continue to pay off in the second quarter, Fifth Third Chairman, CEO and President Tim Spence said Thursday (July 17) during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

In commercial payments, the company’s investments in its Newline by Fifth Third embedded finance platform for enterprises led to 30% year-over-year revenue growth and an increase of more than $1 billion in commercial deposits connected to Newline services, Spence said.

Fifth Third continued to see transactions migrate from legacy ACH to modern instant payment rails during the second quarter, Spence said.

“Rippling selected Newline to be their payments infrastructure provider, joining our existing roster of blue-chip FinTech customers,” Spence said.

Fifth Third saw loan growth in its FinTech platforms, Provide and Dividend, Spence said.

“In a quarter where uneven [commercial and industry (C&I)] loan demand and a soft housing market made loan growth tepid for the industry, our diversified loan origination platforms produced average loan growth of 5% over the prior year,” Spence said.

The company’s loan growth reached its highest level in over two years during the quarter, according to a Thursday earnings release.

Highlighting new additions to the bank’s digital services, Spence said Fifth Third partnered with digital estate planning platform Trust & Will to offer free wills to Fifth Third customers.

When announcing this service in a May 19 press release, Fifth Third said it proactively addresses the concerns of a market in which 83% of Americans think a will is important, but only 31% have one in place.

During the second half of the year, Fifth Third will begin to embed artificial intelligence-enabled functionality into its mobile app. Spence said during the call that this “should further improve the user experience and reduce volumes in higher-cost service channels.”

From the second quarter of 2024 to the same quarter in 2025, Fifth Third saw its average active digital users increase from 3.07 million to 3.17 million and its average active mobile users rise from 2.32 million to 2.43 million, according to a presentation released Thursday in conjunction with the earnings call.

The share of new consumer deposit accounts with digital originations rose from 22% to 28% over the past year, while the share of mortgage applications that were digitally assisted slipped from 98% to 97%, per the presentation.