The closure of a foreign lender’s retail business is not altogether a banking trend, and, neither is it a surprising move.
This I explained to April Senen and Eloisa Bernabe on the decision of ING Bank to exit its retail banking arm in the country. Both are loyal ING customers since the foreign bank institution opened its retail doors here in 2018.
ING is the second foreign lender to close its retail operations. Citibank was the first, a step which basically was a reversal of its move in the 1990s to expand its customer base with the much-hyped and talked about purchase of Insular Savings Bank.
Leaving its four-year-old retail banking operations in the country and in other countries in the region, to instead focus on corporate, institutional, and wholesale banking business is in conformity with the current thrust of the lender with headquarters in the Netherlands. Focusing and servicing corporate and institutional clients are actually its core business when it opened its Manila branch some 32 years ago.
Understandably, the operation here is a collateral damage. Despite the closure of its retail operations, ING is not disposing its clientele base unlike Citibank Philippines, which cashed-in on its huge retail portfolio by selling it to Union Bank of the Philippines.
ING’s “customer base is not for sale,” a muted well-informed banking source told me. As of this writing, ING Philippines country head Hand Sicat has been tight lipped on the issue.
The Netherlands-based financial institution was the first foreign bank among the 29 foreign lenders to obtain a universal bank license in 1996 as allowed under Republic Act 7721, which liberalized the entry and scope of operations of foreign banks in the country.
In step, it’s the first ever foreign bank given the electronic banking license by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, conducting EKYC (electronic know your client) protocol.
Millennials April and Eloisa swear to the beauty of the online app/banking of ING. For a not so tech-savvy individual like me, both made me understand the ease and comfort of navigating through the ING app.
Its app, one can easily navigate, directs a client to which transaction he wants to carry out. It is empowering as the customer is given the power to do things by himself because the app facilitates the client to a menu of banking transactions effortlessly.
It’s super friendly-user that outstanding account balance over a certain period, a required document for any visa application, can be printed by the customer from the online app without any cost.
Comparably, other financial institutions impose a fee on every OTC (over the counter) transaction as withdrawal is slapped with a fee just to encourage banking customers to use ATMs or online banking to save on administrative cost.
Cheers to Consuelo “Zondy” Garcia, former country head, for painstakingly putting all the necessary groundworks for ING’s omni-channel of banking services
These features April and Eloisa will sorely miss when ING finally closes its retail doors this coming end of August. A day before its closure announcement, the bank’s 380,000 retails customers were informed through an SMS telling them that “ING has decided to exit the retail banking market in the Philippines.”
This was followed by another SMS saying: “In line with ING Philippines retail exit, please be informed that these services will only be available until August 31, 2022.”
And, moving forward, inward fund transfers between ING accounts, bill payments, debit card services, issuance and delivery, mobile check deposit, and bank certificate requests will hence be discontinued by September 1, 2022.
We may never know what lies ahead in the medium term. But, taking stock of its farewell announcement that its retail business “showed good progress, commercial momentum and growth potential,” and as the wheels of banking churn faster, I believe waving goodbye to its 380,000 customers but keeping and not cashing-in on its clientele base may be just temporary.
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