California’s retail banking scene will soon welcome a new player.
Fresh off a $12.7-billion merger with Comerica Bank, Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank is preparing to expand beyond its commercial banking focus in the golden state. By early September, the lender will put its branding on Comerica’s 84 branches across California and add a new location in Fresno.
A key post-merger hire for Fifth Third is L.A.-based Regional President Cynthia Jordan, who was brought on from Comerica where she spent 28 years and most recently led the southern California market.
“We had our legal day one Feb. 2, and I have been named the region president for Southern California and Arizona, which is really exciting,” Jordan said.
Cynthia Jordan
Over the past decade, Fifth Third has targeted California for growth in its middle-market banking services, with offices in Century City, El Segundo, Ontario, Woodland Hills, San Diego and San Francisco. Last year, the state made up the largest share of the bank’s commercial loans at 11%.
Now the ninth-largest U.S. bank with about $294 billion in assets, Fifth Third is harnessing Comerica’s presence in some of the country’s fastest-growing markets. The acquired bank, previously headquartered in Dallas, had 352 branches primarily located in Michigan, Texas and California, where it deepened its roots after buying Imperial Bank in 2001.
A career banker and SoCal native, Jordan said her priorities in the transition are stability and investment in fresh and existing talent.
“It’s all about people. It’s about our customers, our team, the community and what we want to accomplish together,” Jordan said. “We have fantastic teams on both sides. (The merger) just gives us pretty much double the boots on the ground.”
With Comerica under its wing, Fifth Third announced plans to add almost 300 new branches by 2030 to a total of 1,750 nationwide, over half of which will be in the Southeast, Texas, Arizona and California.
The bank opened 50 new branches in the Southeast in 2025, including its 200th in Florida.
A branch buildout in California will follow Fifth Third’s current push in Texas, Jordan said. Entertainment, life sciences and transportation logistics are some of the main commercial verticals the bank will home in on.
“This is a growth market for the bank, and we’re very excited about what we can do because we do have a relatively small market share here,” she said. “There’s plenty of room for us to get new business from a lot of the players out there.”
The bank will compete against a number of regional and national banks with significant footholds in the state, but the disruption following 2023 bank failures of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic has created an opening, Jordan said. Patience and openness to a variety of client and transaction types will help the bank find its place in the landscape, she saiD.
“Some of the larger banks might be more upmarket. They might be looking at bigger transactions,” she said. “We’re happy to look at anything and any kind of solution, to get in with a client and to add value and then build the relationship over time.”