Director, Credit Risk Management Administration
When Jessica Faris joined Fifth Third Bank six years ago, she quickly emerged as the "go-to" person to delve into new areas such as the impact of new corporate tax rates on the bank's commercial loan portfolio. Before joining the $211 billion-asset Cincinnati bank, Faris had been practicing family law.
"I knew nothing about banking before I got here, and suddenly I had to become an expert on risk," said Faris. "I developed a reputation for being the go-to person for anything new that came down the pike."
Faris' ability to quickly absorb and act upon novel concepts propelled her from a business controls analyst to director of credit risk in less than five years. Her scope of responsibilities has vastly expanded, and she now is responsible for most of the transformational work in the bank's credit risk division, said Richard Stein, Fifth Third's former chief credit officer. (Stein recently switched jobs in June, becoming an executive vice president and senior risk advisor at Citizens Bank, in Providence, Rhode Island.)
Faris regularly joins C-suite meetings, filling in as a proxy for the chief credit officer, Stein said. She leads the team that manages the bank's credit policies, building and optimizing reporting and analytics capabilities for the credit risk organization, and overseeing credit risk management governance for the bank.
"She is viewed as an equal, another sign that she has the potential to join that table someday," Stein wrote in a letter of support for Faris.
Though Faris did not have a background in credit, Fifth Third created a new role and tasked her with building a team in charge of "taking credit risk to the next level," she said.
Over the past year, Faris created new processes and procedures for the entire credit risk organization, redefining the roles and responsibilities within "the second line of defense," she said.
Colleagues throughout the bank were able to access and utilize credit policy after Faris integrated the commercial and consumer credit policy teams. Faris played a key role in leading a strategic bank-wide program related to credit risk performance metrics. She said one of key results was to "help enable the line of business to own the risk."
"What we've done is try to change the culture where the second line is responsible for oversight—and to effectively challenge" colleagues, she said. "We did some work early on where we crafted a second line document on credit roles and responsibilities and shared it with our team and the first line. And [we] did exercises on how to create productive dialogue and enable people to perform their oversight and to challenge effectively."
Faris said that what she enjoys most about banking is the opportunity to explore and learn something new.
"Coming out of college, I never thought I'd be in banking because I was a practicing attorney," said Faris, who graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis, and the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. "It's been an opportunity to blend my economics and business background with my legal background and hands-on skills."
