Fifth Third Finishes Comerica Systems Merger, but Some Customers Say the Transition Was a Mess

Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB) announced on September 8 that it had completed the technical conversion of nearly 600,000 former Comerica customers and 293 branches across Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Texas onto its own banking systems, according to Yahoo Finance. The conversion, carried out over Labor Day weekend, closes out the integration that began when Fifth Third and Comerica combined on February 1.

The deal turns Fifth Third into the ninth-largest bank in the country by assets, with more than $300 billion on its balance sheet, Yahoo Finance reported.

The Growth Case

Former Comerica customers now have access to Fifth Third's full product lineup, including its Momentum Banking suite, Early Pay and Extra Time features, backed by roughly 1,500 branches and 21,300 ATMs nationwide, per Yahoo Finance and Insider Monkey, which ran identical reporting on the deal's numbers.

In Michigan, where Fifth Third already led in statewide and Detroit retail deposits, former Comerica customers now have 60% more branch access, and existing Fifth Third customers get 42% more, according to the same reporting. Texas is the bigger long-term bet. Fifth Third now operates 107 financial centers in the state and plans to spend nearly $1 billion over five years to add 150 new centers by 2029. By 2030, the bank expects roughly 1,750 branches total, with more than half located in Texas, the Southeast, Arizona and California.

Early deposit numbers back up the strategy so far. Fifth Third pulled in $2.5 billion in consumer deposits from its Comerica Southwest marketing push, and deposits at its Newline platform climbed $2.1 billion with fee revenue up 35% year over year. Net interest margin widened 6 basis points sequentially to 3.36%, and the adjusted efficiency ratio improved 480 basis points from the prior quarter to 57.1%. Net charge-offs fell to 30 basis points in the second quarter, the lowest level since the second quarter of 2023.

The Bill Isn't Fully Paid

None of it came cheap. Merger-related charges cut $155 million from after-tax income in the second quarter alone, contributing to a $0.19-per-share drag from one-time items. Management says year-to-date merger costs already represent about 65% of what the bank expects to spend for the full year, meaning more charges are still coming.

Noninterest expense fell 12% from the first quarter but remained up 67% from a year earlier. Average wholesale funding rose 20% sequentially as Fifth Third leaned on $3.3 billion more in short-term Federal Home Loan Bank advances to cover a seasonal dip in commercial deposits. The bank's CET1 capital ratio sat at 9.93%, down from 10.58% a year earlier, reflecting $933 million in pretax merger-related capital hits, and Fifth Third bought back no shares in the first half of 2026. Nonperforming loans also ticked up, with the NPL ratio rising to 0.58% from 0.54% the prior quarter. Hedge fund ownership of Fifth Third dropped to 35 funds from 46 in the prior quarter, according to Insider Monkey, a pullback in institutional conviction right as the integration reached its finish line.

Customers Say the Switch Wasn't Smooth

Fifth Third told Comerica customers ahead of time that the switch would be simple: just update their logins. That's not how it went for everyone, according to Click on Detroit, the WDIV-TV outlet that fielded complaints from customers about login failures and multi-hour hold times.

Susan Goldfaden, who banked with Comerica for decades, told Click on Detroit the experience was worse than anything she'd seen in her career. After repeated login failures and a long wait on hold, she walked into a branch, closed her account, took her money out in cash and moved to another bank. She acknowledged the switch will now cost her time reworking automatic payments tied to her old account.

Fifth Third Bank Michigan Regional President Steve Davis apologized for the disruption, telling Click on Detroit the bank hit technical problems when hundreds of thousands of customers tried to move online at once. He said staff worked around the clock, including overnight shifts, to restore access, and stressed that customer funds were never at risk. Goldfaden pushed back on the timing of that apology, arguing the bank should have proactively warned customers the moment call volumes spiked rather than leaving people to wonder if their money had disappeared.

A reasonable defense of Fifth Third's rollout is that migrating 600,000 accounts and 293 branches in a single weekend is an enormous technical undertaking, and some friction with a conversion of that scale is close to unavoidable. Davis's public apology and around-the-clock response effort support that framing. But for customers who couldn't reach their own money for hours, that's a thin comfort.

No regulator has announced an investigation into the conversion, and no formal complaint tally has been made public. What's unresolved is whether the customer-service breakdown was a one-time bump tied to the systems cutover or a sign of deeper capacity problems as Fifth Third pushes ahead with its $1 billion, 150-branch Texas expansion by 2029. A buildout of that scope will require the bank to onboard even more new customers while it's still absorbing $933 million in merger-related capital hits from this one.