(US & Canada) VIDEO | We Try to Be Constantly Mindful of Tool Sprawl — Fifth Third Bank CIO

Jude Schramm, CIO of Fifth Third Bank, speaks with Chris Galligan, Senior Manager of Business Development at Centric Consulting, in a video interview about training employees in new technology, avoiding tool sprawl, and the bank’s data priorities for the coming years.

Fifth Third Bank, the principal subsidiary of Fifth Third Bancorp, is an American bank holding company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Centric Consulting is an international management consulting firm with expertise in business transformation, AI strategy, cyber risk management, technology implementation, and adoption.

Speaking about keeping teams relevant in light of the fast evolution of data technologies, Schramm says that organization enables access to and encourages online learning and training on different technologies to grow their competency.

He however highlights the challenge of getting tool sprawl quickly and says that the bank tries to be constantly mindful of the problem.

Schramm stresses that while there are a lot of great tools available, any organization needs really good use cases to bring them in or pivot away from something that it already has. He explains that with analytics, software, and data companies actively moving to subscription models and hosted solutions, it demands good intentionality behind getting the tool sets.

When asked about the bank’s data outlook for the next five-plus years, Schramm highlights two key elements – leveraging generative AI and orchestrating for speed and scalability.

He equates generative AI’s transformative and disruptive potential to search engines and smartphones enabling easy access to information for people. Schramm says that it will be a valuable disruptor enabling banks to deliver a much better product and service capability to customers.

He however maintains that hyperscaling generative AI may be a challenge from a banking perspective due to the regulatory commitments.

Beyond generative AI, Schramm reveals that a lot of Fifth Third Bank’s data strategy is going to be around understanding how to accelerate the access to insights into product and marketing as the data gets more distributed. He mentions that there is a pressing need to rethink the way data movement and use is managed.

Schramm elaborates that traditionally, the majority of the bank’s data was stored within its physical infrastructure. Over the next five years, 80% of the data could be sitting in partner data environments. He concludes that a big focus would be on orchestrating the data for speed and scale, potentially, meshing the data to utilize it in near real-time.

CDO Magazine appreciates Jude Schramm for sharing his insights with our global community.