ING to add clients
Expects three million new clients, credit cards and brokerage services
ING Direct plans to almost double its customer base in Canada and add products including credit cards and brokerage services once Bank of Nova Scotia completes the $3.1billion (Canadian) purchase of the online bank from ING Groep NV.
ING Direct expects to have at least three million customers in five years, up from its present base of 1.8 million, chief executive officer Peter Aceto said. The number of clients may rise even higher with the backing of Canada’s third-biggest bank, Aceto added.
Scotiabank “is much more interested in the growth of our business than our current shareholder,” Aceto said in an interview. “That’s something we’re excited about, in terms of growing our customer base, in terms of growing our deposit base.”
ING Direct, which provides products such as high-interest savings accounts, checking accounts and mortgages, plans to introduce a credit card to customers by next year, Aceto said. Discount brokerage services and unsecured lines of credit could follow, he said.
“We just think about what are the basic needs of the typical Canadian who doesn’t need a branch to do business,” Aceto said.
ING Groep opened ING Direct in Canada in 1997, the first of many branchless banking ventures in countries including Spain and Australia. ING, the biggest Dutch financial-services firm, received € 10 billion ($13.1 billion U.S.) of state aid in 2008. Following its bailout, the Amsterdam-based bank was or- dered by the European Union to sell its insurance operations, its U.S. online bank and Dutch mortgage lender Westland Utrecht Bank before the end of 2013. The bank’s Canadian client base compares with about seven million consumer bank customers for Scotiabank, according to the bank’s website. That’s on top of about 12 million international customers spread over countries including Mexico, Peru and Thailand. Scotiabank agreed last month to acquire ING Direct in a transaction that will boost its deposits by $30 billion (Canadian).