2016 corporate social responsibility reportour commitment

This CSR Report serves as a companion to Fifth Third's 2016 Corporate Annual Report, published in March 2017 and available at 53.com.

I marked my first anniversary as CEO of Fifth Third last November. I am honored to lead this Company and extremely proud of the great strides we took in 2016, especially in terms of progress made against our strategic plan, which we call NorthStar, and a key component of it, our $30 billion Community Commitment for 2016-2020. This report includes the details of our first year results.

Our Vision for Fifth Third is to be the One Bank people most value and trust. We also want to be a top-performing bank regardless of economic cycle as well as a respected bank. The entire Fifth Third team—the Board of Directors, the executive leadership and our more than 18,000 team members—understands fully that trust and reputation must be earned.

We intend to do this by keeping our customers and communities at the center of everything we do, and by doing the right thing for them every single day. We also will further partner with the 145 National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) member organizations, who last year signed a historic agreement to help Fifth Third implement our $30 billion Community Commitment.

The NorthStar strategy is a three-year plan to help ensure that we meet our financial targets for net income, efficiency, business diversification and balance sheet strength. It further defines the path toward achieving risk and regulatory excellence. Specifically, we want to improve our rating on our next Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) exam. We also hope to strengthen our brand and reputation by improving the customer experience, creating stronger brand equity and building an earned reputation based on high ethical standards and daily practices with all of our constituencies.

Fifth Third is committed to inclusion and diversity. This year, for the first time, we are sharing our employment diversity data in this report. We are one of only a few U.S. banks to do so. While we are not satisfied with our performance in all categories, we firmly believe that transparency is key to both accountability and visibility regarding areas for focus.

In 2016, we took a significant step toward ensuring that we can meet the ambitious and achievable goals we've set, creating the position of chief corporate social responsibility and reputation officer, and naming Brian Lamb to the post. Brian previously headed Fifth Third's North Florida region, and is now a member of our Enterprise Committee. He will lead the comprehensive strategic framework of our civic commitments and reputation management for Fifth Third.

Successfully executing on our plans at every level of the Company will ensure that we can have a powerful impact on our community. At Fifth Third, we have always believed that to build a strong bank, we need to build strong communities.