The ING DIRECT story in Canada.
For years, Canada has been one of the most service-charged nations in the developed world. So there was a real need for something like ING DIRECT-something to give Canadians real choice in banking. Having done business in Canada for more than 40 years through ING Group insurance subsidiaries, we've been at home here for a while. Over 4,000 Canadians work for ING Group companies. In addition to ING DIRECT, these companies include:
ING CANADA, BELAIRdirect, ING Insurance Company of Canada, ING Novex, ING Funds and ING Wealth Management.
In 1995, members of ING's Commercial Banking group were looking at ways to expand their retail banking outside the Netherlands when some Canadian ING executives in Canada advised that direct distribution was booming in North America. ING DIRECT was born.
ING DIRECT opened in April 1997 from its call center in Toronto, Canada. The launch coincided with an aggressive "Save Your MoneyР’В®" advertising campaign. Canada was meant to be a pilot project. If things went well, ING would roll out the ING DIRECT concept elsewhere. If not, tough luck. As it turned out, things went very well, and Spain and Australia opened in 1999, followed by France and the United States in 2000, Italy in 2001 and the UK in 2003.
Our simple business model of saving people money has proven to be a success. Canada became the first profitable ING DIRECT in 2001, and that continues today. ING DIRECT Canada now has over 1 million clients, employs over 750 people and has over billion in assets and is growing at a tremendous rate.
Worldwide, ING DIRECT also continues to grow, today serving over 8 million customers with assets in excess of 60 billion Canadian dollars.
ING DIRECT around the world.
ING stands for Internationale Nederlanden Group. So, we're sure you can guess from that that yes, we're Dutch. To learn more about ING click here.
Today, ING DIRECT is active in 7 countries: Canada, Spain, France, Italy, the USA, UK and Australia. All countries execute the same business model. Globally there are more than 6 million total customers and over billion (Cdn) in assets under management. ING DIRECT wants to become the leading global brand in direct banking.
