ING Sees some Customers Rising Despite the Remuneration Discussion. ING succeeded in attracting more customers and selling more loans in the first quarter, despite the high-level debate about the salary of CEO Ralph Hamers.
The bank also benefited from lower risk costs, with the result that the profit increased, the bank reports Wednesday.
The financial group received more than 400,000 customers worldwide, resulting in a total customer base of 37.8 million. The customer base grew, especially in Germany and Australia. Hamers emphasises that there was growth in the Dutch market,
where ING has around eight million customers. In his view, this shows that it is possible to manage the reputation of the bank by focusing on good services.
ING came into disrepute earlier this year because of a proposal for a hefty pay rise for its CEO. The bank wanted to increase the remuneration of Hamers by 50 percent this year, to over 3 million euros. After a great public and political outrage had arisen about this, the proposal withdrawn.
Motives
In the weeks that the discussion was at its most intense, customers left the bank, but there were also new customers every day. According to Hamers, it is difficult to trace the motives of the customers have rescued. The bank, therefore, prefers to look at the positive total figures.
ING is doing well at the moment when the economy is picking up actively. For example, the bank also had to put aside less money for bad loans. All in all, around 14.7 billion dollars of new credit set aside.
The bank’s income went up by 1.4 percent annually to almost 5.38 billion dollars and gross profit increased by 2.1 percent to just under 2.03 billion dollars. Last but not least, a net profit of 1.43 billion dollars was left behind. That was 7.2 percent more than in the first quarter last year.
