When the banking crisis of 2023 hit, Fifth Third's Bridgit Chayt and her team were put to the test. As executive vice president and head of treasury management and commercial payments, Chayt had led the team earlier in the year on an initiative to speed up the process of onboarding deposit clients.
On March 8, Silicon Valley Bank announced a common stock sale to raise capital — in response, its stock plunged 60% and clients sought to withdraw over $40 billion. A day after the announcement, Fifth Third received its first request for a new account. When SVB was seized by regulators on March 10, a Fifth Third team worked over the weekend to onboard a volume of accounts that would typically be opened in a one-month period.
Fast forward to today, and 36% of accounts are opened within five business days, with 55% opened within 10. The team is using this experience to improve onboarding and integration for treasury management clients; early results show an 80% reduction in cycle time for core services.
Chayt started at Cincinnati-based Fifth Third as director of wholesale payments in 2016, after almost 19 years at Comerica leading its treasury management and business deposit services. She is one of four executive leaders in the commercial bank at the firm — and the only female executive vice president (there are six female executive VPs at Fifth Third overall).
Chayt oversees product, sales and go-to-market strategy. As of March, treasury management and commercial payments made up 9% of the firm's total revenue. In 2023, treasury management generated over $753 million in revenue.
Having been in the business for many years, Chayt said rising bankers today must have the skills that can help the bank itself rise. "As we look at the next generation of financial services, it's these types of skills that will make sure that banks continue to leap and not cede their leadership position to the nonbank financial sector," she said. "We have to navigate that intersection between experience and innovation in order to do that."
She added that, as we move from a 2.0 to a 3.0 world, "it's never been more important for bankers to be able to inspire their teams to answer the question, what's next? Knowledge management, decision-management frameworks, how to make sure you avoid being all things to all people, is the critical skill set for rising bankers."
Early in her banking career, Chayt said that a previous boss was looking to start his own bank, and he asked her to join him. Given her lack of experience, she wondered why. What she realized is that, "I was going to almost serve as a reverse mentor for him as he looked to both bring in investors and start a bank that was going to be meaningful to a new client base." She said this ultimately gave her the courage to seek out roles in which she might not have full subject matter expertise but could still bring an important perspective.
Chayt said that while challenges remain, things are better overall for women in the industry since those early days of her career. While only around one in five women in financial services are in the C-suite, "those one in five are much better at sharing their spotlight, at trying to make that number more than one in five. There's a better passion for women helping women and being advocates for them," she said.
