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CINCINNATI, Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Fifth Third Bank (Nasdaq: FITB) today announced it scored significantly higher than the average of four of the country's largest retail banks in a customer satisfaction survey conducted by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

Fifth Third Bank engaged ACSI in a fourth quarter 2008 research project to compare its customer satisfaction performance to that of five major U.S. banks - Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Citibank, Wachovia and Wells Fargo & Co. The survey was conducted via telephone and included 250 Fifth Third customers. Fifth Third tied with Wachovia, the industry leader (now a part of Wells Fargo), and easily surpassed the other four banks.

"Over the course of the last four years, we've seen significant improvement in overall customer satisfaction and loyalty," said Michael Menyhart, the Bank's senior vice president and director of Customer Experience. "We've developed an industry best-in-class measurement process based on customer feedback to guide our customer satisfaction program, and it's paid off. The results we've seen from the ACSI report validates the progress that we've made."

The ACSI is an economic indicator based on customer evaluations of the quality of household goods and services purchased in the United States. ACSI independently measures customer satisfaction of approximately 200 companies in 43 household consumer industries. ACSI was first compiled in 1994 at the National Quality Research Center (NQRC) in the Ross school of Business at the University of Michigan and today, it is produced by the NQRC in partnership with the American Society of Quality (ASQ) and CFI Group.

Fifth Third Bancorp is a diversified financial services company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Company has $120 billion in assets, operates 16 affiliates with 1,307 full-service Banking Centers, including 93 Bank Mart(R) locations open seven days a week inside select grocery stores and 2,354 ATMs in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia and North Carolina. Fifth Third operates five main businesses: Commercial Banking, Branch Banking, Consumer Lending, Investment Advisors and Fifth Third Processing Solutions. Fifth Third is among the largest money managers in the Midwest and, as of December 31, 2008, has $179 billion in assets under care, of which it managed $25 billion for individuals, corporations and not-for-profit organizations. Investor information and press releases can be viewed at www.53.com. Fifth Third's common stock is traded on the NASDAQ(R) National Global Select Market under the symbol "FITB."