A First for Fifth Third: Inkjet Press with In-line Binding

Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank has a robust print and mail operation.

"We're a 24/7 shop, and we produce approximately 170 million impressions a year, which equates to 70 million pieces of mail," reports Mark Kearns, vice president, Print & Mail Services. "We produce all of our customer correspondence, from customers' account statements to bank card statements to mortgage notices—all of our products across the enterprise."

The high-volume transactional shop recently made some major changes in the way it produces those documents when it added a Ricoh InfoPrint 5000 inkjet press in-line with a Standard Hunkeler roll-to-stack system.

"We have a subset of customers that like to be online, and we supply them with the best online tools and experience, but we have another subset of customers who want to get that piece of print in the mail," notes Kearns. "They value that channel and, of course, we value it also."

As some First Third customers have migrated to the Internet, the in-plant has certainly been doing less printing, but the printing it is doing has also become more sophisticated, providing more value for the customer.

"Our vision is to be the one bank that people most value and trust. With the amount of customer touch-points we have, we know that we have the opportunity to help that vision become a reality," Kearns explains.

"We really want to make sure our print mail pieces have true value for the customer—that they're getting the correct information, the correct format, at the correct time and with the best customer experience—and that we're getting a good return on that investment," he says. "So in order to make that happen, we spent two years researching."

In recent years, Fifth Third Bank's fleet of print engines included continuous-feed and cut-sheet monochromatic, toner-based technologies. But the in-plant's interest in inkjet changed the pressroom landscape.