Word: inge
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...people. ING Direct has more than 5 million account holders, with 100,000 to 150,000 more signing up each month. "Before it was a curiosity, but now banks look at the outflow of accounts to ING Direct, and they're reacting," says Alenka Grealish, managing director of the banking group at consultancy Celent. Citibank, HSBC, Capital One, E-Trade and Emigrant Bank are among those offering no-fee, no-minimum-balance Web-only accounts with well-above-average interest rates. Many even offer rates higher than ING Direct's. Kuhlmann's response: "Knock yourself out." So far, new-account...
Expanding into new products also helps deflect the competitive threat. "ING Direct is under pressure, no matter what they say, to sell more to their customer base," says Chris Hitchings, an analyst who covers ING for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in London. By offering checking accounts and online bill payment, ING Direct gives its customers more reasons to stay put: once they set all that up, they are less likely to switch banks for half a percentage point of interest...
...same time, new products add un-ING-like complexity. When it rolled out checking in March, the bank introduced a system for doing nearly all transactions online; handing out checkbooks was deemed too cumbersome. But there was no easy solution for customers who had to have paper checks for the landlord or the babysitter. So ING Direct now prints and mails some 25,000 paper checks a month on customers' behalf--no charge for the stamp. Kuhlmann battled his staff for weeks over the issue, insisting that no matter how transparent, ING Direct wouldn't charge...
...with each new product, Kuhlmann tests the limits of the firm's founding ideals. Take mortgages. ING Direct offers just two: a five-year mortgage currently at 6.60% APR and a seven-year one at 6.67%. Why no 30 year? Kuhlmann reasons that since most people move or refinance within seven years, they just don't need it. "It seems to me they're paying a lot more than they need to," he says. That's a fine principle. But the reality is that most people still want a 30-year mortgage. So this spring, ING Direct started referring people...
...ING Direct ranks 24th among U.S. banks when measured by total deposits, but it has a commanding share of the Internet banking market...