Fifth Third Bank

• Type: Bank; PPP lender of record and Main Street Lending Program lender
• Legal entities: Fifth Third Bank, National Association; holding company Fifth Third Bancorp
• Headquarters: Cincinnati, Ohio

Fifth Third is a Midwest and Southeast regional bank that ranked 15th among PPP lenders by approved dollars. SBA's loan-level file credits it with 65,935 loans and $7.4 billion.¹ Its annual reports put a number on what the program paid: interest income recognized on PPP loans, which includes the origination fees, added $97 million to net interest income in 2020 and $189 million in 2021.²

The PPP book

The loans averaged $111,572 and went to 59,908 borrowers, who reported 790,729 jobs. Modeled loan by loan from SBA's published fee schedule, Fifth Third's processing fees come to $272.7 million: $165.9 million on 2020 first-draw loans, $22.7 million on 2021 first-draw loans and $84.1 million on 2021 second-draw loans, 24th of 4,688 originating lenders.¹ SBA never published what it paid each lender.

Fifth Third's 10-K for 2020 attributes the year's rise in average commercial and industrial loans "primarily" to PPP originations and credits fourth-quarter net interest income in part to "an increase in accelerated PPP fees recognized upon loan forgiveness."³ Under the accounting banks used, a PPP fee was booked over the life of the loan, and an early forgiveness pulled the unbooked remainder into the quarter it happened. By December 31, 2021 the bank still held PPP loans with a carrying amount of $1.3 billion. At that date Fifth Third reported $211 billion in assets and 1,117 full-service banking centers in eleven states.²

A scorecard from the branches

In July 2020 the Committee for Better Banks, a coalition of bank branch workers, graded the twelve largest retail banks on their March-to-May response to the pandemic: small-business lending, worker protections and customer protections. Banks lost points for giving existing clients "concierge treatment" in PPP. The American Prospect reported the result: "Only one, Fifth Third Bank, earned above a C," while U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, PNC and Santander got an F.⁴

The agents' lawsuit

David S. Lowry, CPA, Ltd., an Ohio accounting practice, sued a group of lenders in the Southern District of Ohio in spring 2020, No. 1:20-cv-00348, seeking a share of their PPP fees for agents who had helped borrowers apply. The defendants were U.S. Bancorp, PNC, Huntington, First Financial, The North Side Bank & Trust Company, and Fifth Third Bancorp and Fifth Third Bank.⁵ Fifth Third was among the lenders that opposed centralizing the agent suits; the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation denied centralization on August 5, 2020.⁶ The pattern of those cases is in The Agents Got Nothing.

Main Street loans

Fifth Third also lent through the Federal Reserve's Main Street Lending Program, which bought a 95 percent participation in each bank loan it took. Fifth Third sold it three loans, and the program's participations in them came to $211.85 million, 14th of the 320 lender entries in the Fed's disclosure.⁷ Two of the three were among the program's largest: $130 million to Finley Production Co LP of Texas, fourth on the list, and $76 million to a group of Ohio health-care leasing companies, ninth.⁸

In the fraud files

Fifth Third turns up in criminal cases as a lender that paid out on false applications. Denis Casseus pleaded guilty in the Middle District of Florida after submitting, among others, a February 27, 2021 PPP application to Fifth Third for Best Cars Dealer, Inc.; his plea agreement provides for restitution to SBA and Fifth Third of at least $298,875.⁹ A July 2024 indictment in the Eastern District of Michigan alleges that a $1,760,000 PPP loan Fifth Third disbursed to Renovis Healthcare, LLC in 2020 rested on overstated payroll and a false tax form; the charges are allegations.¹⁰

Sources

1. Fifth Third Bank PPP lender page, computed from SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data. Original: https://data.sba.gov/dataset/ppp-foia SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data (stored capture) ↩
2. Fifth Third Bancorp, Form 10-K for 2021 (filed Feb. 25, 2022). Original: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/35527/000003552722000119/fitb-20211231.htm ↩
3. Fifth Third Bancorp, Form 10-K for 2020 (filed Feb. 26, 2021). Original: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/35527/000003552721000100/fitb-20201231.htm ↩
4. The American Prospect, David Dayen, "Unsanitized: Banks Judged On How They Treat People, For Once" (July 15, 2020). Original: https://prospect.org/2020/07/15/unsanitized-banks-judged-on-how-they-treat-people-for-once/ ↩
5. Schedule of Actions, In re Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Agent Fees Litigation, MDL No. 2950, Dkt. 1-2 (J.P.M.L., filed May 22, 2020). ↩
6. Order Denying Transfer, MDL No. 2950, as filed at Dkt. 86-1 (N.D. Fla.). ↩
7. Main Street Lending Program: 25 banks by participations sold. ↩
8. Largest Main Street Lending Program loans (Federal Reserve transaction disclosures). ↩
9. Plea agreement, United States v. Casseus, No. 2:23-cr-00009 (M.D. Fla. May 11, 2023), Dkt. 30. Original: https://ecf.flmd.uscourts.gov/doc1/047125632724 ↩
10. Indictment, United States v. Eburuche, No. 2:24-cr-20400 (E.D. Mich. July 25, 2024), Dkt. 1. Original: https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.mied.378617/gov.uscourts.mied.378617.1.0.pdf ↩