FIFTH THIRD BANCORP | 2013 | FY | 3


3. RESTRICTIONS ON CASH AND DIVIDENDS

The FRB, under Regulation D, requires that banks hold cash in reserve against deposit liabilities, known as the reserve requirement. The reserve requirement is calculated based on a two-week average of daily net transaction account deposits as defined by the FRB and may be satisfied with vault cash. When vault cash is not sufficient to meet the reserve requirement, the remaining amount must be satisfied with funds held at the FRB. At December 31, 2013 and 2012, the Bancorp's banking subsidiary reserve requirement was $1.6 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively. Vault cash was not sufficient to meet the total reserve requirement; therefore, as of December 31, 2013 and 2012, the Bancorp's banking subsidiary satisfied the remaining reserve requirement with $942 million and $1.1 billion, respectively, of the Bancorp's total deposit at the FRB. The Bancorp's total deposit at the FRB is held in other short-term investments in the Consolidated Balance Sheets.

The dividends paid by the Bancorp's banking subsidiary are subject to regulations and limitations prescribed by state and federal supervisory agencies. Due to the regulations and limitations, the Bancorp's banking subsidiary was prohibited from declaring dividends without also obtaining prior approval from supervisory agencies at December 31, 2013 and 2012. The Bancorp's banking subsidiary paid the Bancorp's nonbank subsidiary holding company, which in turn paid the Bancorp $859 million and $2.0 billion in dividends during the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively.

The FRB issued guidelines known as CCAR, which provide a common, conservative approach to ensure BHCs, including the Bancorp, hold adequate capital to maintain ready access to funding, continue operations and meet their obligations to creditors and counterparties, and continue to serve as credit intermediaries, even in adverse conditions. The CCAR process requires the submission of a comprehensive capital plan that assumes a minimum planning horizon of nine quarters under various economic scenarios.

The mandatory elements of the capital plan are an assessment of the expected use and sources of capital over the planning horizon, a description of all planned capital actions over the planning horizon, a discussion of any expected changes to the Bancorp's business plan that are likely to have a material impact on its capital adequacy or liquidity, a detailed description of the Bancorp's process for assessing capital adequacy and the Bancorp's capital policy. The capital plan must reflect the revised capital framework that the FRB adopted in connection with the implementation of the Basel III accord, including the framework's minimum regulatory capital ratios and transition arrangements.

The FRB's review of the capital plan will assess the comprehensiveness of the capital plan, the reasonableness of the assumptions and the analysis underlying the capital plan. Additionally, the FRB reviews the robustness of the capital adequacy process, the capital policy and the Bancorp's ability to maintain capital above the minimum regulatory capital ratios as they transition to Basel III and above a Basel I Tier 1 common ratio of five percent under baseline and stressful conditions throughout a nine-quarter planning horizon.

The FRB issued stress testing rules that implement section 165(i)(1) and (i)(2) of the DFA. Large BHCs, including the Bancorp, are subject to the final stress testing rules. The rules require both supervisory and company-run stress tests, which provide forward-looking information to supervisors to help assess whether institutions have sufficient capital to absorb losses and support operations during adverse economic conditions.

In March 2013, the FRB announced it had completed the 2013 CCAR. For BHCs that proposed capital distributions in their plan, the FRB either objected to the plan or provided a non-objection whereby the FRB concurred with the proposed 2013 capital distributions. The FRB indicated to the Bancorp that it did not object to the following proposed capital actions for the period beginning April 1, 2013 and ending March 31, 2014: the potential increase in its quarterly common stock dividend to $0.12 per share; the potential repurchase of up to $750 million in TruPS, subject to the determination of a regulatory capital event and replacement with the issuance of a similar amount of Tier II-qualifying subordinated debt; the potential conversion of the $398 million in outstanding Series G 8.5% convertible preferred stock into approximately 35.5 million common shares issued to the holders and the repurchase an equivalent amount of common shares issued in the conversion up to $550 million in market value, and the issuance of $550 million in preferred shares; the potential repurchase of common shares in an amount up to $984 million, including any shares issued in a Series G preferred stock conversion; incremental repurchase of common shares in the amount of any after-tax gains from the sale of Vantiv, Inc stock and the potential issuance of an additional $500 million in preferred stock. Actions consistent with these proposed capital actions were substantially completed in 2013.

The DFA requires that BHCs with over $50 billion in consolidated assets that participated in the 2009 Supervisory Capital Assessment Program, including the Bancorp, conduct two stress tests each year. On May 13, 2013, the FRB launched the 2013 Mid-Cycle Stress Tests, which was submitted to the FRB in July 2013. The stress tests required the BHCs to develop their own baseline, adverse and severely adverse scenarios to reflect its individual operations and risks. Each BHC was required to release its results under the severely adverse scenario, which the Bancorp disclosed on its website on September 24, 2013.

The FRB launched the 2014 stress testing program and CCAR on November 1, 2013. The stress testing results and capital plan were submitted by the Bancorp to the FRB on January 6, 2014.

The FRB expects to release summary results of the 2014 stress testing program and CCAR in March 2014. The results will include supervisory projections of capital ratios, losses and revenues under the supervisory adverse and supervisory severely adverse scenarios. The FRB will also issue an objection or non-objection to each participating institution's capital plan submitted under CCAR. Additionally, as a CCAR institution Fifth Third is required to disclose its own estimates of results under the supervisory severely adverse scenario using the same consistently applied capital actions noted above, and to provide information related to risks included in its stress testing; a summary description of the methodologies used; estimates of aggregate pre-provision net revenue, losses, provisions, and pro forma capital ratios at the end of the forward-looking planning horizon of at least nine quarters; and an explanation of the most significant causes of changes in regulatory capital ratios. These disclosures are required by March 31, 2014 and are to be sent to the FRB and publicly disclosed.


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