CorpDigest
ING Group N.V.
Leadership History
7 leaders · 1991 to present
Last reviewed: 2025-07-15 · By Swet Parvadiya
ING's cost-to-income ratio of 42.5% is structurally lower than BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, or any of the major European banking peers that operate branch networks across the continent. The reason is architectural: ING is a branchless direct bank in Germany, Spain, France, and several other markets where competitors maintain expensive physical retail networks. No branches means no real estate costs, no branch staff costs, and no branch operational complexity. The model was designed this way in 1997 when ING Direct launched, and the financial logic has compounded ever since. The $25.38 billion in FY2024 total income — up from $19.8 billion in 2022 — reflects the European interest rate cycle as much as anything the bank did operationally. Net Interest Income, which accounts for approximately 75% of total income, expanded dramatically as the ECB raised rates from negative territory to positive. ING's deposit base — retail customers who accepted near-zero rates during the low-rate years — repriced slowly. The spread between what ING earned on loans and what it paid depositors widened. The 2012 forced sale of ING Direct USA to Capital One for $9 billion was a painful demonstration of the costs of accepting state aid. The European Commission required the divestiture as a condition of approving the €11 billion Dutch state bailout in 2008. ING sold its most profitable and fastest-growing digital banking asset because it had no choice. Capital One acquired one of the best-designed digital banking franchises in the U.S. Market for a fraction of what it eventually proved to be worth. The return on equity of 14.8% in FY2024 — driven by expansion into high-yield unsecured consumer lending in Spain and Italy — exceeds most European banking peers and reflects the continuing payoff from the 2008 crisis discipline that stripped away ING's most capital-intensive and least profitable divisions.
CEO
2020 – Present
6 years (current)
Accelerating ING's digital model, managing interest rate cycle impact on profitability, and advancing ING's climate transition commitments.
CEO
2013 – 2020
7 years
Led ING's digital transformation and launched the Think Forward strategy. Departed amid an anti-money-laundering settlement controversy.
Chairman/CEO
2009 – 2013
4 years
Managed the €10 billion Dutch government bailout, negotiated the required divestitures with EU regulators, and began ING's transformation into a focused bank.
Chairman/CEO
2004 – 2009
5 years
Led ING during the pre-crisis growth phase and the initial response to the 2008 financial crisis before stepping down.
Chairman/CEO
2000 – 2004
4 years
Oversaw ING's expansion into the Americas, including ING Direct USA, and began rationalizing the sprawling post-expansion portfolio.
Chairman/CEO
1992 – 2000
8 years
Executed ING's aggressive international expansion through the 1990s, including the acquisition of Barings Bank and numerous European retail banks.
Chairman/CEO
1991 – 1992
1 year
Led the founding 1991 merger of Nationale-Nederlanden and NMB Postbank, creating ING Group's bancassurance model.
That singular, painful event catalyzed a profound operational transformation, stripping away the bank's historical complacency and forging a highly disciplined, risk-averse culture that now supports its record-breaking financial performance. ING's Financial Markets desk provides essential hedging, foreign exchange, and fixed-income services to its corporate clients, generating steady trading revenues that are largely insulated from the proprietary trading risks that plagued the bank in the pre-2008 era. Surprisingly, the rise of digital neobanks like N26, Revolut, and bunq presents a different type of competitive threat. ING effectively neutralizes the neobank threat by matching their digital user experience while using its massive deposit base to offer the high-margin lending products that the neobanks cannot sustainably provide. Asset quality remained remarkably resilient, with the cost of risk hovering around 25 basis points, reflecting the high quality of the Dutch mortgage book and the disciplined, algorithmic underwriting standards applied to the unsecured lending portfolios in Southern Europe. The single most persistent and capital-intensive challenge facing ING Group is the relentless, escalating regulatory burden surrounding Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance across its fragmented European footprint. The ongoing cost of maintaining this fortified compliance infrastructure permanently elevates ING's operational risk-weighted assets and compresses its cost-to-income ratio, acting as a persistent drag on profitability that newer, less scrutinized fintech challengers do not face to the same degree. Finally, the bank's strategic shift toward unsecured consumer lending in Southern Europe, while highly profitable, introduces elevated credit risk. While mortgages provide a stable, low-risk foundation, unsecured personal loans, auto finance, and credit cards generate significantly higher risk-adjusted returns. However, the catalyst for the modern ING Group was the European Union's push for financial integration and the impending deregulation of the European banking sector in the late 1980s. This rapid, debt-fueled global expansion transformed ING into a systemic global financial behemoth, but it also sowed the seeds of immense vulnerability.
Michel Tilmant served as ING's CEO from 2004 to 2009, a period when heavy exposure to U.S. subprime and Alt-A securities pushed the bank toward crisis. He stepped down in early 2009 shortly after ING accepted a €10 billion Dutch state capital injection in October 2008.
Jan Hommen led ING from 2009 to 2013 and managed the European Commission-mandated restructuring, overseeing the breakup of the bancassurance model and early state-aid repayments. Under him ING began divesting insurance and non-core units to shrink toward a focused European bank.
Ralph Hamers ran ING from 2013 to 2020 and drove its digital-first strategy and 'Think Forward' overhaul before leaving to become CEO of UBS in 2020. His tenure also included the 2018 settlement in which ING paid €775 million to Dutch prosecutors over anti-money-laundering failures.
Steven van Rijswijk took over as CEO in 2020 and pursued aggressive portfolio focus, exiting markets such as Russia to concentrate capital on higher-return segments. He scaled unsecured lending in Southern Europe and ran multi-billion-euro buybacks that helped lift return on equity to 14.8%.