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Keep it simple says President and CEO of ING Direct USA

Arkadi Kuhlmann, president and CEO of ING Direct USA
2:46 p.m., Nov. 11, 2003--“Keep it simple,” Arkadi Kuhlmann, president and CEO of ING Direct USA told those attending the Lerner College of Business and Economics fall 2003 Chaplin Tyler Executive Leadership Lecture Series, on Friday, Nov. 7.

For Kuhlmann’s ING, keeping it simple means concentrating on a few banking products, making those products as customer friendly as possible and creating a powerful brand personality that resonates with its target customers. “We try to balance the business to customer behavior.”

To do that, Kuhlmann said, ING uses the web, telephone and direct mail to do its banking. Customers can open savings accounts, apply for mortgages, buy certificates of deposit or move money into their checking accounts from home and not have to worry about fees or minimums.

It’s called direct banking and since there are no buildings to maintain, no branches to staff, the bank passes its savings on to its customers in the form of higher than average yields, no transaction fees and no minimums, according to Kuhlmann.

The closest ING comes to having branches are ING Direct Café's in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles, where clients can drop by for coffee or business, according to Kuhlmann.

Kuhlmann said the bank’s role models have been organizations like Southwest Airlines and Dell Computer, companies that have been able to reposition themselves with their target customers as companies that offer reliable services and products at reasonable cost.

And though ING Direct has no bricks and mortar branches, it will go into an area and stage a huge event to let potential customers know it is still part of the community. Kuhlmann called it “guerrilla marketing tactics.” For example, the company held a “Movie on the Beach” day in California that drew 5,000 people.

“We don’t need product managers to come up with new products or people in IT to find new ways of doing what we’ve been doing well. If something isn’t cost-effective, we don’t want it,” Kuhlmann said.

“We’ve made $18.5 billion in assets in three years. We’re one of the fastest growing banks in the U.S. and on our way to doubling the size of the bank next year,” he said.

ING Direct USA is headquartered in Wilmington, and is one of eight direct banks owned by ING, a Dutch group operating in 65 countries with more than 112,000 employees and $700 billion in assets. ING is one of the world's largest integrated financial services organizations.

Kuhlmann had more than 20 years of senior executive experience before coming to ING Direct in 1999. He also was a professor of international finance and investment banking at the American Graduate School of International Management in Phoenix. His work with charitable organizations led him to found ING Direct Kids Foundation, created to help improve the lives of foster children, particularly in low-income areas.

Article by Barbara Garrison
Photo by Kathy Atkinson

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