Europe’s largest direct bank ING breaks with a tradition!
It abolishes the free current account without any preconditions. From May, EUR 4.90 per month is due for those who do not use their ING checking account regularly, but only for money parking. 700,000 customers are affected!
In the future, at least 700 euros must be received in the account per month. ING Germany boss Nick Jue: “We want to be more than just the free alternative.” The goal is “to establish an active customer relationship with all customers”, Jue explained when presenting the balance sheet.
The bank claims that it has a total of 2.8 million customers. According to the current status, three quarters of them are not affected by the fee hammer. “Our strategy is to get customers to become house bank customers,” says Jue.
▶ ︎ There will soon be only nine direct banks offering a completely free current account (including DKB, Consorsbank, Comdirect).
No negative interest planned
In contrast to many other financial institutions, ING does not want to introduce negative interest rates.
CFO Norman Tambach assured: “At the moment we have no plans to introduce negative interest.” Commercial banks currently have to pay 0.5 percent interest if they park excess funds with the European Central Bank (ECB).
The direct bank ING lured – for a long time under the name ING-Diba – savers with comparatively attractive interest rates. However, the daughter of the Dutch major bank ING cannot avoid the general low interest rate as a result of the ECB’s monetary policy. Net interest income declines and commissions become a more important source of income.
For some time now, the direct bank has been increasingly focusing on doing more business with individual customers – for example through mortgage lending, consumer credit or saving securities. The bank now sees itself as a house bank for 1.8 million of its customers.
The bottom line is that the institute, which is active in Germany and Austria, won around 215,000 customers last year and now has 9.5 million clients. Contrary to Jue’s goal, the ten million mark has not yet been reached by private customers.
The pre-tax profit increased by two percent compared to the previous year to 1.352 billion euros, the surplus increased by one percent to 898 million euros. ING Germany thus contributes about a fifth to the ING Group’s earnings. The major bank ING earned less operationally in 2019 due to significantly increased costs for personnel and regulatory costs. Adjusted for special effects, profit fell by 11 percent to 4.8 billion euros.
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