Dury, who has two children at university, usually starts his days before 7am. They don't end until 6pm or later. Some nights, Dury says, he logs in to the company's network from home to ensure timely communication about decisions and to respond to urgent e-mails. He is sometimes awakened in the middle of the night by his staff if there are incidents requiring executive decision.

"Funds and transfers are always coming in and going out," he says. "Because of the business we're in, there's never a green zone, never a moment where you can sit back and just coast."

As a result, Dury has created teams to respond quickly to any incidents that require immediate attention. However, critical outages may still involve his input. If there's a security breach, for instance, he may need to work with security administrators to secure the network perimeter. Dury says such demands can be challenging. Still, he doesn't face these challenges alone; contractors in India assist with overnight processing and deal with minor incidents when things go wrong.

Since arriving at Fifth Third last November, Dury has also worked with his team to devise processes and procedures for improvements in quality, delivery and financial efficiency of business initiatives. For example, Dury and his team completed a new data centre that improved production operations and system recoverability.