Amsterdam,
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- Strong growth in fee income of 20% year-on-year, net interest income resilient.
- Operating expenses remain under control. This quarter’s expenses include €180 mln provision for compensation to Dutch retail customers with certain consumer credit products.
- Risk costs remain low as overall book quality is strong.
- Resumption of capital distribution through dividends and launch of share buyback programme in October.
- Q2021 result before tax of €1,924 million; capital position strengthens, CET1 ratio at 15.8%
CEO statement
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“I’m pleased with our results in the third quarter,” said ING CEO Steven van Rijswijk. “We saw continued lending growth in mortgages, whereas loan demand from businesses was influenced by the economic effects of the Covid pandemic. Even so, our commercial lending margins were slightly higher and we saw strong fee growth in account package fees, investment products and lending.
“Expenses were under control, the quarter includes a €180 million provision we took for the compensation of Dutch retail customers for past interest charges that did not sufficiently follow market rates. On risk costs, we were able to release some of the additional provisions we took earlier. Other issues are moving to the forefront for clients, like disruptions to supply chains, rising energy prices and increasing inflation. We’ll continue to support our clients wherever we can. I’m grateful for our customers’ loyalty, as we gained about 95,000 primary customers since the last quarter, bringing the total number of primary customers to 14.1 million.
“We aim to digitalise processes in order to increase productivity and decrease the time customers have to spend on banking. At Interhyp in Germany, the digital mortgage platform called ‘HOME’ is used by customers, advisors, brokers and bank partners. Today, nearly 500,000 customers use the digital self-services the platform provides. This has led to a marked decrease in manual workload for advisors and partners, and a much faster decision for customers.
“In Romania, where over 70% of our customers connect with us through their mobile device, we now have a complete digital product offering, including personal loans, insurance, investments, savings, current accounts, shopping programmes, mobile card payments and virtual cards. Our mobile sales in Romania have more than tripled since 2019.
“We continued to take steps in the third quarter to be an action leader in the fight against climate change, sharpening our target for reducing our funding to upstream oil and gas and working to set net-zero targets for the eight other sectors in our Terra approach. Many of our clients trust us as their strategic partner in achieving their sustainability and long-term growth ambitions, such as leading data-centre provider Aligned. They’re taking good steps on sustainability in the area of digital infrastructure. ING has received four consecutive sustainability-related mandates from Aligned over the past 12 months, helping them issue the first data-centre sustainability-linked loan and the first green data-centre securitisation.
“We’ve launched a share buyback programme as we start on the path to optimise our capital while maintaining our focus on our customers. I am pleased we could return capital to our shareholders, and thank them for their understanding throughout the distribution restrictions during the pandemic.
“Our hybrid mode of working is beginning in ING countries around the world and colleagues are slowly starting to return to the office, but we need to remain vigilant until the pandemic is truly over. In the meantime, I remain grateful for everyone’s flexibility and commitment.”
