What’s on our CEO’s mind? Steven van Rijswijk newspaper interview

Europe’s economic future, the role of banks, and Extinction Rebellion: ING CEO Steven can Rijswijk covers it all in an interview with Dutch paper Het Financiele Dagblad. Read the English translation below.

ING CEO Steven van Rijswijk: ‘I’m not going to spend my whole day dealing with Extinction Rebellion’

“Europe is at risk of falling further behind," warns ING CEO Steven van Rijswijk. He advocates for more investments in the economy. A strong banking sector is also needed for that, with equal rules for everyone.

Steven van Rijswijk is married, lives near Amsterdam, has three children, plays padel, and regularly walks the dog - the same dog the children had promised to walk themselves. But why would people want to know that, he asks. He is an employee - okay, CEO - of ING, and what he does in his free time is, in his view, completely irrelevant.

The banker rarely gives major interviews. At most, a brief chat after presenting the half-year figures. Van Rijswijk is cautious when speaking about the bank where he has worked for thirty years. The media, including the FD, don’t always report things exactly as they happened, he believes. So he takes his time answering questions, pauses to think, and fiddles with the pens in front of him. Sometimes he says things like, “Are you trying to put words in my mouth?!” He speaks thoughtfully and occasionally offers unsolicited advice during the nearly two-hour conversation: “I’d like you to phrase this precisely in the article. This is very sensitive.”

We do our best. And he does too, after half an hour of shadowboxing. Especially when it comes to big topics like the energy transition, the digital resilience of our economy, and how banks can help safeguard Europe’s sovereignty.

Is that really necessary, safeguarding European sovereignty?
“We can safely say that it’s under pressure. Our security is at stake. We sometimes forget here that ensuring our security requires a strong competitive position. In the United States, the government actively steers this; in Europe, it has long received little attention.”

What do you mean?
“They - the Americans - understand that a strong global competitive position is essential to guarantee security. In Europe, we don’t seem to realise that. As a result, European companies are less competitive. They offer fewer jobs and innovate less. We need to ensure that European companies continue to take risks, train people, and put them to work. That leads to higher production, knowledge growth, and a positive impact on our economy - and therefore on our social system. If we’re not competitive enough, we make ourselves too dependent on other regions in crucial areas.”

How can European banks contribute to strengthening that competitive position?
“They can increase the resilience of the economy. Take the COVID pandemic, for example. At that time, governments around the world called on banks to support the economy. National champions, like ING in the Netherlands, must be there in times of European crisis. To continue doing that, you need strong, large European banks. That requires harmonised regulation, starting with harmonising the European capital buffers for banks.”

What’s wrong with those?
“If we were to move our headquarters to Gelsenkirchen, 230 kilometres to the east, we’d need to hold several billion less in capital - capital that would then be freed up for banking activities. In Europe, we need to do much more to remove internal restrictions. And that doesn’t just apply to banks. We need standardisation in areas like data, cybersecurity, consumer products, and import tariffs. In the European Union, we have €12 trillion in savings - 75% of the annual gross domestic product. That should be used to stimulate the economy.”

We’re in ING’s flexible office in Amsterdam’s Bijlmer district. Van Rijswijk is sitting in his usual spot, with two colourful works by artist Melanie Bonajo behind him. This is where he always does his video calls - a habit that developed over the past few years. In the adjacent open space is the executive board’s worktable. “That helps keep communication lines short,” he says. For formal decisions, there’s the boardroom. Things can get heated there. Meetings used to be on Monday mornings, but some board members found that a bit much to start the week. Now they’re held on Monday afternoons.

Steven van Rijswijk may not often seek the public stage, but he’s not afraid to voice his opinion once he’s there — even on sensitive topics like climate change and the criticisms from environmental activists such as Extinction Rebellion. They attended the bank’s shareholders’ meeting this past April. The demonstrators disrupted the meeting with piercing whistles and were removed by police. They accuse ING of being the country’s biggest “fossil” bank and draw national media attention with their dramatic actions. ING always responds substantively, including this time. “We are one of the few global banks that have been asked by scientists to help establish climate standards for the entire sector.”

You repeat your substantive message time and again. Why does it seem that groups like Extinction Rebellion get their message across more effectively?
“We think it's good that there’s a lot of attention for the climate. It’s clear that we all need to do a lot to address climate change. We must do that by taking action, by being part of the solution - not by throwing around one-liners. A large part of society values not only sustainability but also other matters. We constantly look at how we can help customers make their business processes more sustainable. That’s our primary concern. The climate issue crosses national and sector boundaries. If we want to solve it, we won’t succeed just by saying something in the newspaper or pointing fingers at one party. We need to sit at the table with all stakeholders and tackle the challenges together. I’m not going to spend my whole day dealing with Extinction Rebellion.”

“We are committed to making our society more resilient. That’s why I represent the financial sector on the Cyber Security Council. In the Netherlands, across all industries, we’ve built just-in-time production chains. Everything here operates hyper-efficiently, without excess slack. That’s something we’re good at in the Netherlands - in the financial sector, food supply, logistics, and energy. But if one link breaks, what then? We’re happy to help make our society more resilient. Banks have traditionally been good at that - we have alternatives ready when systems fail. Just look at Spain. During a power outage, everything went down - except the banks. That’s not much use if you’re the only one prepared. We need to collectively want to make society more resilient.”

“Take defence, for example: the vast majority of European businesses agree that we need to strengthen it. In the Netherlands, progress is still slow, but only 20% of our business activities are here. Other countries are further along. In Poland, for instance, we recently financed a very large defence order. It’s urgently needed. We’re now giving up the dividend we’ve been living off for the past eighty years.”

You’ve worked at ING for about thirty years now, five of them as CEO. What setback has stayed with you the most?
“The moment ING had to pay €775 million to the public prosecutor for structural shortcomings in preventing money laundering. Our anti-money laundering approach had to improve quickly - and that was necessary - but there was so much pressure on the issue that it started to interfere with running the bank. You want to serve people better, offer more products in more countries, and grow the business. But during that period, the recovery work on customer and transaction monitoring overshadowed everything.”

You started as CEO in July 2020, when the COVID crisis was in full swing. Then came the war in Ukraine, followed by fractures in global supply chains. Weren’t those even bigger shocks?
“You’re forgetting the rapidly rising interest rates - which then dropped sharply again - the rising inflation, and the earthquake in Turkey, where we’re also active. A lot has happened in the outside world. I think ING has weathered it well. This latest series of setbacks are what I call tail risks: unpredictable events with major impact. The money laundering issue was intrinsically about ING. That was a topic that kept coming up in the boardroom.”

You say: so much has happened in the five years you've been CEO. Amid all these tail risks, have you had time to shape the bank according to your vision?
“We’ve become much more focused, consolidated, and standardised in the area of technology. Because Europe hasn’t integrated the way we hoped, each country still has its own banking market with different products, regulations, and deposit guarantee schemes. That means you can’t just implement one system and roll it out across all countries. To keep growing, we need to be relevant to our customers and make an impact. To achieve that, you need scale in each country.”

“In certain countries, we didn’t succeed in that - like France, Austria, the Czech Republic, and the Philippines. We’ve exited our consumer banking operations there. In other countries, we don’t yet have that scale or breadth, but we aim to achieve it: Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia.”

Stopping operations in France must have been a tough pill to swallow. You tried there for a long time.
“For a very long time. Every year we thought: now we’ve got it, now it’s going to work. We’d been saying that to each other for over twenty years. We were too much of a one-size-fits-all operation. We couldn’t get customers to take up products beyond our savings offering. But you learn from that. We’ve now become better at taking the local market context into account.”

Did you learn any other lessons in France?
“If you choose a certain direction, you have to stick with it. You need to ensure there’s enough oxygen for that part of your bank. Don’t start investing and then stop a year later. And then start, stop, start, stop. That drains the belief and hope from the organisation.”
How are you applying those lessons in the countries where you do believe growth is possible?
“The Netherlands isn’t our biggest challenge, although there are still steps to take here - in wealth management, insurance, pension services, private banking, for Gen Z, and for expats. Germany is one of the countries where we want to grow. There, we have a savings and mortgage bank for individuals, and on the other end of the spectrum, we serve the country’s top 100 companies. We’d like to fill the gap in between - with more services.”

Through acquisitions?
“I don’t comment on rumours about that. If journalists write about it - fine, that doesn’t bother us. It’s by now clear to other European banks that we want to strengthen our growth through acquisitions.”

Will you still be CEO when ING becomes - as you call it - a universal bank in the countries where you want to grow? Or will you be retired by then?
“I’m not planning to step down, if that’s what you mean. I have a contract and I get a lot of energy from my work. I hope I can give that energy back to the people I work with. When the time comes for me to leave, I’ll be happy to hear it. Then I’ll go walk the dog more often.”

This article was published in Dutch in Het Financiële Dagblad on 19 July 2025.