Dive Brief:

• Longtime M&T Bank executive Darren King has joined Fifth Third as head of regional banking, the Cincinnati-based lender announced Monday.
• King succeeds Kris Garrett, who is retiring. Garrett, who has served as Fifth Third’s wealth and asset management chief, as well as its regional president, will stay on until June to ensure a smooth transition, the bank said.
• King left M&T last August “for personal reasons,” the Buffalo, New York-based lender said at the time. King had served at M&T for 24 years, including as CFO from 2016 to 2023. King began overseeing retail and business banking, and mortgage and consumer lending at M&T when the bank hired Truist alum Daryl Bible to serve as CFO.

Dive Insight:

In his role, King is expected to drive strategy, cultivate talent and pursue growth across Fifth Third’s footprint, with responsibility for middle-market commercial banking and wealth and asset management in each region, the bank said.

Fifth Third has historically maintained a Midwest focus but in recent years has doubled down on its push into the Southeast – aiming, in the long term, for a 50/50 balance between the regions.

“In order to do that, the Southeast has to get about 50% bigger over the course of the next five years,” Fifth Third CEO Tim Spence said in January 2024. King will report to Spence.

To that end, Fifth Third wants to open 200 branches across the Southeast by the end of 2028, the bank said. Helping the lender on that journey is a patent-pending geospatial heat mapping tool that yields a more than 80% success rate in identifying the right location for the next branch, a Fifth Third executive told Banking Dive last fall.

“You want to be where people are naturally going. If a customer goes to Kroger or Harris Teeter every day, you want to be next to the Kroger or Harris Teeter,” said James Anthos, the bank’s director of distribution strategy and retail analytics. “You don’t want to be next to a site where they only go once a month.”

King, for his part, said he was “thrilled to lead Fifth Third’s regional banking organization into a dynamic future.”

"Throughout my career, I’ve had the honor of working with complex, rapidly growing businesses; diverse and talented leadership teams; and significant clients,” he said. “I’m eager to build upon the exceptional foundation the Fifth Third team has established to drive future growth for this remarkable franchise.”

In a statement, Spence called King “a seasoned leader with a strong track record leading business teams to realize successful financial outcomes.”

"His leadership and business development skills will be immediately impactful for our clients and our employees as we continue to grow across our footprint,” Spence said. “I look forward to partnering with him to demonstrate both the value and the strength of our regional model."

Spence also credited Garrett for the “rapid growth and exceptional performance” of Fifth Third’s wealth and asset management offerings.

“I am deeply grateful for her contributions to our success,” Spence said.

Garrett joined Fifth Third in 2017 from CIBC, where she served as president of U.S. private wealth for the Canadian lender, according to her LinkedIn profile. She previously spent 20 years at JPMorgan Chase in private-banking and commercial real-estate roles.

Private banking was Garrett’s initial focus at Fifth Third, but the bank added wealth and asset management to her responsibilities in 2019, and she became regional president in 2022, the Cincinnati lender said.

Brian Foran, a Truist Securities analyst, said King appeared to be a natural fit at Fifth Third.

"He spent quite a bit of time running retail … and the retail bank is such an important part of the Fifth Third story," Foran told American Banker. "So I think hiring someone who's got all that experience and has run a similarly sized competitor's retail bank seems like a pretty good pickup for them."