ING Direct 2009 Annual Report Download - page 45

EASIER!
ING launched several online tools during the year aimed at
making retirement savings, life insurance and investments
easier for customers to understand and purchase. In March,
INGCompareMe.com was launched, which enables people to
gauge where they stand in relation to others on a wide range of
saving, spending, retirement savings and other personal finance
matters. Business Week magazine included the website on a
short list of ‘useful retirement calculators’ and its developer at
ING was listed as one of the ‘Top 10’ innovators of 2009 by Bank
Technology News. In individual life, INGforLife.com was launched
to provide education for individuals and lead generation for
agents. In Retirement Services, My Retirement Outlook went live,
which allows people to determine whether they are on track to
meeting their retirement financial objectives. It is available on
www.ingretirementplans.com.
CONCLUSIONS AND AMBITIONS
In 2009, Insurance Americas played a key part in ING Group’s
Back to Basics strategy by derisking its business, divesting non-core
businesses and reducing costs. This was done while also improving
customer satisfaction scores relative to peers.
In light of the decision to split ING Group and separate the
insurance and investment management business from the banking
activities, the Group’s short-term goal is to strengthen the
profitability and returns of the insurance and investment
management businesses by continuing to reduce costs, investing
in top-line growth, focusing on higher margin products and making
the best use of our talent. ING’s long-term goal is to strengthen
the insurance and investment management businesses further as
world-class players.
The Americas businesses will remain focused on customers’ needs,
providing retirement and life insurance products through a broad
set of distribution channels in a transparent manner. Emphasis will
remain firmly on product innovation with a focus on simplicity, lower
costs, operational efficiency and outstanding customer service.
ING will build on work done in 2009 to broaden its commitment to
the multicultural retirement services market. At the end of the year,
ING expanded its multicultural sales team, particularly in retirement
services. The multicultural markets are integral to the Company’s
growth in the core businesses of retirement services, life insurance
and financial solutions, given the strong growth rates in the Latino,
African American, Asian and other diverse segments in the US and
Latin American markets.
The legacy annuity business contains all annuities that were sold up
until the beginning of 2010. ING substantially derisked its variable
annuity products during the year, by repricing the products,
reducing living benefit features, increasing hedging and adding a
significant number of passive funds among other measures. This
business is effectively being managed as a closed block of business,
which will run off over the course of the next 20 years or so.
Success in the rollover annuity market requires new distribution
channels to complement ING’s existing distribution strength. ING
will continue to distribute annuity products to customers through
traditional distribution channels such as wirehouses (major financial
services organisations), independent financial advisers and banks,
but will also focus on developing direct channels such as the
internet or telephone, which will be important for the growth
of this new business.
US INDIVIDUAL LIFE INSURANCE
US Individual Life Insurance continued to benefit from its diversified
product offering and broad distribution capacity. The business
provides universal life policies as well as variable and term life
products, and sells them through more than 80,000 independent
insurance salespeople nationwide. During 2009, ING Life sold
159,000 policies, an eight-fold increase on the 17,000 policies ING
sold in 2005, when a new life insurance strategy came into effect.
ING now ranks number 10 in the US in total individual life sales,
led by a strong position in term insurance sales.
During 2009, Individual Life generated 20% of its new sales
through its Specialty Markets channel which drives sales through
non-traditional channels including internet ‘quote shops’, email,
and via the web. As part of this strategy, ING rolled out a web-
based tool, ING for Life® (www.ingforlife.com) which enables
people to easily evaluate their life insurance needs, and to obtain
a quote or even to be connected to a licensed life insurance agent,
if desired.
LATIN AMERICA
ING operates the second largest pension business in Latin America.
In Peru, ING is ranked number one with a 32% market share, in
Uruguay, the second largest; in Mexico and Chile, the third largest;
and in Colombia, the company ranks among the top-five providers.
The five businesses together have 9.4 million customers and
EUR 35 billion in Assets under Management. Despite challenging
conditions, ING held its market share in all countries. ING’s strong
market positions in life and pension businesses across the region
enabled the Company to continue to post solid top- and bottom-
line growth in 2009, despite the financial crisis.
ING continued to transform its business away from non-life
businesses to further focus on retirement services and savings
activities. Non-core businesses in Chile and Argentina were
divested. The businesses in the region continued to develop
wealth management strategies with a core focus on mandatory
and voluntary retirement savings plans.
A new wealth management platform was successfully established
in Chile as a means of capturing a larger share of the affluent
market. As a result of this success, ING plans to roll out the
platform in other countries in the region, as part of Latin America’s
strategy to target affluent markets.
ING Group Annual Report 2009 43