Word: inge
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...personality cult hasn't hurt the company either. Headquartered in an old warehouse on the Christiana River in Wilmington, Del., ING Direct projects a Silicon Valleyesque energy and idealism that come straight from the top. Consider the Orange Code, a manifesto of sorts penned by Kuhlmann and chief operating officer Jim Kelly, which includes lines like "We aren't conquerors. We are pioneers." Kuhlmann rants about spend-happy Americans and the companies that feed their addiction by selling them credit cards--"the opium of consumerism." When the rest of the banking industry lobbied for a new bankruptcy...
...while, ING Direct keeps a laser focus on who its ideal customer is. Because the company sells bare-bones products at a slim margin, it needs low-maintenance customers. At the firm's New York City café, one of five token storefronts, manager Omar Woodard recently let an older woman walk away without an account after she worried aloud that branchless banking might be too newfangled. "Customers who don't fit our business model don't fit our business model, and that's totally O.K.," says Woodard. "The bank just wasn...
...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...