Next year, ING will reach the goals announced in 2005, that is one million retail clients, although business is going much slower, says Albert Roggemans, the head of the retail division of the Dutch bank.
Consumer loans are becoming more problematic, because people are affected by the crisis ant stop paying their instalments, Roggemans says. However, mortgage loans, traditionally a stronger point of ING, are still comfortable in their quality. The report of the Dutch group for December last year showed that the share of non-performing loans in the real estate loan portfolio in Romania stood at merely 0.4%.
"Last year we took 5% of the newly sold personal loans. We accounted for much more of the mortgage loans," says Roggemans without specifying the market share of the bank based on the financing still being repaid. He says ING is still growing a little faster than the market because it has to catch up.
"We continue to grant loans, but (the amount is) down to one third of last year's. We are growing a little faster than the market, but people no longer want to take out loans, when they do not know whether they will have a job in a year or not."
As far as deposits are concerned, ING maintains its market share, and as such it has much more cash than it did a year ago, because it simply cannot invest all the funds in loans to its clients.
The ING group, which is now going through a reorganisation of its business after having had to turn to the Dutch state for help this spring to be able to cope with the very heavy losses recorded, has recently announced it remained interested in some of the emerging markets in the region, Poland, Romania and Turkey, but dropped its retail operations in Ukraine.
Excluding the impact of spending on provisions, ING's retail division has broken even, Roggemans says, who anticipates a reduction in risk cost in the future.
The Dutch launched large-scale retail operations in 2004, bringing a new business model on the market, where the customer uses self-service machines installed in offices, while advisory services are provided by partners who work with ING as franchisees.
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