Word: kuhlmann
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...Arkadi Kuhlmann is annoyed by banks. He thinks that it's ridiculous for customers to pay so many fees. That it isn't too much to ask for a real person to pick up the phone when you call the 800 number. That you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to keep your personal information from being sold to other companies. But unlike your typical bellyacher, Kuhlmann is able to change things, since he's running a bank--one the rest of the industry is scrambling to copy...
...fledgling company, ING hired Kuhlmann, whose buttoned-up career in finance--by age 33, he was a vice president of the Royal Bank of Canada with his own private dining room--hid an edgier side, the side that rides a Harley and reads palms, a skill he picked up from his European grandmother. In ING Direct, Kuhlmann saw a revolution, a chance to fix the things he knew people hated about banks. Companies in other industries had succeeded with stripped-down versions of competitors' products--Southwest flew airplanes without assigned seats; Ikea sold design-minded furniture without assembling...
...Suggesting there is a McDonald's approach to banking is heresy," says Kuhlmann. But the no-frills strategy has worked. Since the Canadian trial, ING Direct has launched in eight more countries. In the U.S., where Kuhlmann is now CEO, ING Direct is the largest Internet bank, with more than half of the country's $90 billion in online deposits, according to market tracker SNL Financial. And without a single branch, ING Direct is the 28th largest bank of any kind in the U.S., as ranked by assets (and 24th by deposits), nipping at the heels of regional powerhouses such...
...dotcom crash, few Web banks survived, but ING Direct persevered. "When we were making all those big investments without too much return, I had to answer a lot of questions," says Michel Tilmant, who chairs the executive board of parent company ING in Amsterdam. But ING was committed to Kuhlmann and the ING Direct vision and spent the money to continue...
...questions. "Is it pronounced I-N-G or Ing?" a first timer asks. (The former.) With a hip sound track and stacks of ING Direct clothes for sale, the cafe feels more like Banana Republic than a bank. "It's not supposed to be avant-garde," says CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann. "We're basically saying banking should be as uncomplicated as a cup of coffee...