Financial health
Money is a leading cause of stress for people everywhere. This makes being financially healthy so important. But what does this mean? We see it as being able to smoothly manage your current financial obligations and have confidence in your financial future.
More on the United Nations environment programme finance initiative (UNEP FI) Financial Health & Inclusion Commitment.
ING believes financially healthy people contribute to a healthy economy and drive social progress. That’s why we aim to stimulate customers and communities towards improved financial health behaviour. We can make a difference by empowering people to stay a step ahead in their financial journey. Plus, it’s one of the ways we contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, particularly towards sustainable and inclusive economic growth (goal 8) and reduced inequalities (goal 10).
We aim to make an impact on improving financial health behaviour by helping people manage their everyday finances and helping them plan for the future, while being an accessible bank for everyone.
Everyday finances and planning for future
We use technology and our insights on money to create innovative digital tools that help customers come to grips with their everyday finances.
- Everyday Round Up, for example, encourages customers in Poland, Australia, Türkiye, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Romania to build savings.
- In the Netherlands and Belgium, budgeting tools and Kijk Vooruit (‘Look ahead’) help customers plan and control their expenses.
- We offer smart digital investment tools like My Money Coach in Italy, Money Up! in Spain, Easy Invest in the Netherlands and Komfort-Anlage in Germany.
Another focus area is financial education, where we aim to increase financial literacy. This means having the knowledge and skills needed to make important financial decisions, thus helping people to make better decisions about what to do with their money.
- In Poland, we support entrepreneurship and help manage finances through Firmove.pl, a platform where we write about business in simple terms, encouraging people to make financial decisions responsibly with an understanding of their consequences.
- ING’s financial health hub in Australia shares the latest tips and inspiration to help you look after you financial health.
- In Romania, we launched a financial education communication program 2023, which is like a TV-show, called ‘Couples therapy with your money’.
- In The Netherlands, we use the reach of our mobile banking app to convey messages of our partner Moneystart aimed at preventing those money mistakes that are the most leading causes of problematic debt amongst youngsters.
To support financial health in our communities, we partner with local organisations that provide financial planning, coaching and debt counselling.
- These include Romania’s Banometru and Banocontrol as well as Nantik Lum in Spain, which provides social workers with financial education, so they get help to talk to the users of the city’s social services about financial capabilities, including family finance, savings and avoiding debt.
- ING in the Netherlands is a founding father of “National Coalition of Financial Health’ in which private and public partners jointly have set an objective to have 50 percent fewer households that are financially vulnerable or unhealthy by 2030. CEO of ING Netherlands, Peter Jacobs, is chair of the NCFG.
Accessible bank for everyone
Accessibility, or the ability to access things, is a prerequisite to managing one’s life. That extends to managing financial matters. ING wants to be an accessible bank for everyone, including people living with disabilities whether that means sight, hearing, physical disabilities or cognitive/learning disabilities.
More on our commitment to accessibility.
Measuring our progress and impact
We continue to explore ways to measure and understand our impact. We’re working with United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) under the Principles for Responsible Banking to contribute to setting a measurement standard for financial health impact for our industry. In the Netherlands, we introduced a financial health index in collaboration with the National Institute for Financial Information (Nibud) and academic and business partners. It aims to set the market standard for gauging financial health and stimulating behavioural change.
In line with our UNEP FI Principles for Responsible Banking commitment, we have set a long-term target in the Netherlands on the UNEP-FI core indicator (CS010: customers with products connected to long-term savings and investments plans). We successfully reached our target of a 25 percent increase at the end of December 2024, while it was originally set for the end of 2030 (base year 2022). This calls for new ambitions: we have set a new target aiming for a 40 percent increase by the end of 2030 (base year 2024).
The target group for this includes all digital primary customers that have been with ING in the Netherlands for at least a year. Of these customers, those who (i) use the automatic savings option for their savings account and/or (ii) set periodic investments for their investment products contribute to the target. Promoting financial resilience, this target aims to support the savings and future planning habits of customers.
Progress on this target shall be reported on annually.