Wealth & Finance Finance Awards 2015

www.wealthandfinance-intl.com 13 ING Group is a Global Financial Institution that serves more than 33 million private, corporate and institutional clients in more than 40 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Australia. The Luxembourg office works in the areas of retail banking, private banking, commercial and institutional banking and financial markets. We got in touch with Damien Degros, Head of Commercial Banking at ING Luxembourg, to find out how they have doubled their results since he took over the reins of the department eight years ago. ING Luxembourg has three core businesses which include retail banking and its branch network, private banking and commercial banking. Our clients are mainly composed of legal persons, companies, Luxembourg and international corporate groups, public and semi-public institutions and financial institutions. As for our commercial banking department, our services are divided into four different areas. First, we work on financial investments or acquisitions in Luxembourg and beyond. We also look at payment trans- actions and the management of flows and deposits in terms of payment and cash management, which is perhaps the most important activity of ING Luxembourg. We also look at custodian types of securities prod- ucts, which is also an important part of our job as Luxembourg is known globally for fund services. In this particular field, we specialise in hedge funds where we offer custodian and securities services. Since our inception 8 years ago, we have more than doubled our re- sults, in terms of our assets and all of our activities. As you can imagine, we are very pleased with these results, and are in line to our long term objectives. Furthermore, it is particularly rewarding that we are part of growing business despite the difficult number of years that the private banking sector has experienced. We believe that fundamental to our growth has been our diversification strategy. Our ambition is not to be the biggest, but rather to be developing segments to consolidate ING Luxembourg activities. Nonetheless, we are one of the biggest in the SME market, where we have been ranked fourth. Furthermore, we aim to strengthen our pres- ence there through a proactive approach to business. As with many of our services, we have become very competitive and strongly believe that we still have real scope for growth in the years ahead. As for the international corporate sector, we are strongly established locally and with the international network of ING, we can quickly and easily capture even more clients to do business with. With regards to the funds industry, private equity as well as corporate and insurance services, we are one of the leading firms in these sectors. Therefore, we have different positions within our markets, and this allows us to increase our opportunities for development and growth while building on our strong segments. As a company working in a highly competitive industry, we are always looking to innovate and develop our services. We have been part of an advisory committee for five years, where we meet five times a year and this gives us the opportunity to present different projects and ideas to other professionals and peers. We find these meetings particularly in- formative as the members of the committee express their opinions and also share their strategy too. Looking towards the future, we are looking to expand more on the cus- tomer experience aspect of our business, focusing particularly on the digi- tal side of our services and reporting. In this respect, we want to provide a service that is more informative to our clients. Although we invest a lot in the digital side of our business, we are at the same time convinced that the banking business will still hugely rely on personal relationships. Additionally, the real estate market is equally important for us, especially since it will continue to grow in the next two to three years. We already have a great presence and we will continue to support developers, investors, building companies on their property projects in Luxembourg. With all of these ambitions combined, we remain very optimistic about the future. As mentioned earlier, we have more than doubled our results since our inception and we want to maintain on this course in the next eight years. We are confident that we can achieve this thanks to our international reputation, strong banking brand and our position as an employer of choice in our sector.