Conclusions and ambitions
In 2007, ING achieved solid results in the US and established a strong foundation for growth in Latin America through the acquisition of the Latin American pension businesses.
ING will continue to focus on investing for growth in investments, life insurance and retirement services in the Americas. ING’s market strength in key businesses puts it in a good position to achieve this goal.
In the US, the impending retirement of baby boomers is dramatically increasing their focus on saving for retirement. By 2020, two-thirds of the investable assets in the US will be controlled by baby boomers. The inter-generational transfer of wealth estimated to exceed USD 40 trillion creates major opportunities for financial service companies with scale.
Companies such as ING which have leading positions in the retirement services and variable annuities markets and which provide a broad array of risk management guarantees have a significant advantage. Increasingly, retirees and pre-retirees are looking for guarantees to protect their wealth.
Both top-line and bottom-line growth in the Americas will be driven organically, but with increasing emphasis on growth through acquisitions.
Key areas for acquisition are US retirement services, variable annuities and asset management, along with pensions and life insurance in Latin America.
ING will continue to focus on the needs of the customer, whether it’s the end-customer, distributor, plan sponsor or partner. This will mean creating innovative product solutions on an accelerated timetable, and initiating and executing improvements to customer service and technology capabilities. In this way, we plan to deliver on our promise of making it easier for our customers and distributors to do business with ING.