Bigger Story This article is part of ING's Annual Review 2015. read the 2015 Annual review

Our geographic profile

At ING, we have defined three categories of markets: market leaders, challengers and growth markets.

Market Leaders

These are our businesses in mature markets in the Benelux where we have leading positions in retail and wholesale banking. Our strategy is to grow in selected segments, continue to invest in digital leadership with a digital-first model, deliver on operational excellence programmes and create greater cost efficiency in order to fund business expansion in growth markets.

Challengers

These are markets where we offer both retail and wholesale banking services. Our retail activities are mainly direct-banking offered online with a significant cost advantage over traditional banks. Our strategy is to leverage on our strong savings franchises in these markets to expand into payments accounts and increase the number of primary customer relationships.

We are also using our direct banking experience to grow the lending business at low cost in areas like consumer and SME lending. And we are using our strong savings businesses to fund expansion of wholesale banking, particularly to support clients in Industry Lending and Transaction Services.

Growth Markets

These are markets with a full range of retail and wholesale banking services in markets with expanding economies and strong growth potential. We are investing to achieve sustainable franchises and will focus on digital leadership by converging to the direct-first model and by prioritising innovation.

Wholesale Banking

We are a European-based wholesale bank with global reach and strong positions in a number of global franchises, including Industry Lending, Financial Markets and Transaction Services.