Conclusions and ambitions
ING Direct has been operating for ten years with continued strong commercial growth. It faced a challenging year in 2007. The flat yield curve environment, strong competition and required repositioning of ING Direct UK affected its profit. Excluding the UK and growth investments, profit rose by 7%.
Growth remains the underlying theme of our vision to become the world’s most preferred consumer bank. In this respect, good progress was made. In 2007, 2.8 million new customers were welcomed, bringing the total to more than 20 million worldwide.
ING Direct continued to invest in building the business and expanding its product offering and will continue to pursue its growth strategy in a challenging market environment by further building the business – in the US, for example, where we still see much potential – and by product line – savings, mortgages, payment accounts and investment products. In the product area we will concentrate most on expanding the mortgage business, payment accounts and investment products.
Payment accounts will be rolled out in three more countries in 2008, with continued growth in Germany, Spain and the US.
The competitive environment for savings is expected to continue, as other banks intensify their efforts to compete for retail deposits to fund their lending business, so we will make sure that adequate savings rates and proper asset and liability management, closely aligned with our pricing strategy, will be maintained going forward.
ING Direct will continue to take a customer-centric approach as this will give us the best possible chance of achieving our vision of becoming the world’s most-preferred consumer bank.
Number of clients, total funds entrusted, residential mortgage portfolio, off balance sheet funds
| Clients in thousands funds entrusted residential mortgage portfolio and off balance sheet funds in EUR billion and market rankings at end of November 2007 | Clients | Funds entrusted |
Residential mortage portfolio |
Off balance sheet funds |
Market rankings* |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 2006 | 2007 | 2006 | 2007 | 2006 | 2007 | 2006 | 2007 | |
| Canada | 1,526 | 1,491 | 13.9 | 12.3 | 13.2 | 9.5 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 7th** |
| Spain | 1,624 | 1,455 | 12.9 | 13.0 | 6.5 | 4.8 | 1.9 | 1.5 | 9th** |
| Australia | 1,316 | 1,414 | 12.0 | 11.2 | 18.3 | 15.4 | – | – | 6th |
| France | 716 | 626 | 12.9 | 12.3 | – | – | 1.5 | 1.2 | 9th*** |
| United States | 6,524 | 4,629 | 41.3 | 36.0 | 17.9 | 12.5 | 1.8 | 0.3 | 17th |
| Italy | 937 | 792 | 14.2 | 14.0 | 3.3 | 1.8 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 7th* |
| Germany | 6,124 | 5,703 | 58.5 | 57.2 | 35.9 | 25.0 | 12.9 | 11.0 | 6th |
| United Kingdom | 1,137 | 1,099 | 22.3 | 36.3 | 1.9 | 0.1 | – | – | 11th |
| Austria | 357 | 302 | 3.5 | 3.5 | – | – | 0.0 | 0.0 | 7th |
| Total | 20,262 | 17,511 | 191.5 | 195.9 | 97.0 | 69.0 | 18.8 | 14.6 | |
* Market ranking in retail funds entrusted in local banking market at year-end.
** Ranking at end of November 2007.
*** Ranking at end of September 2007.
