ING Direct 2002 Annual Report Download - page 34

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Annual Report 2002 · ING Group 31
ING Europe
Europe will ultimately have a series of service
centres with attractive scale and capable of
delivering high-speed and high-quality back-
office services to the business units.
In addition to creating shared service
centres, the operations/IT programme calls for
aligning the IT application architecture. This is
necessary in order to enhance connectivity
between applications and enable business units
to share customers, products and services. In
2002, the aligned IT application architecture
became operational and the first applications
were connected. The operations/IT investment
programme also involves moving toward
common standard software solutions.
New partnerships in operations
As part of its effort to improve efficiency, ING
entered into several new alliances with outside
parties. The most important is the alliance with
Bank of New York for sales, marketing and
servicing of global custody and related services
to institutional clients in Germany, the Benelux
and Central Europe. The partnership will provide
global services to ING Investment Management’s
Benelux operations, encompassing approximately
EUR 90 billion in assets. ING Bank will provide
sub-custody services to Bank of New York in the
Netherlands, Belgium (already in force), Germany
and Central Europe. Another promising develop-
ment is the closing of partnership agreements
with leading software companies in India. The
agreements cover the fields of IT application
maintenance and software development.
Regions
The Netherlands
During 2002, the Dutch business was engaged in
an extensive restructuring whereby all activities
are being re-grouped into four divisions: Retail,
Wholesale, Intermediaries and Operations/IT.
This new structure is aimed at increasing cross-
selling, strengthening client focus, intensifying
co-operation between business units and
improving quality. In 2002, several important
steps were taken in the restructuring process.
The new organisation will be fully operational in
the course of 2003. Within Retail, client
segmentation was further fine-tuned. ING Bank
is now fully focused on affluent clients,
Postbank on the mass retail market with
operational efficiency and RVS on the mass
 
Hessel Lindenbergh,
Executive Board member,
discussing wholesale issues
with Rients Prins, global
head of ING’s Global Clients
department, and (on his
right hand) Filip Deelen,
managing director Global
Clients London.