ING in Australia has reported a statutory after-tax net profit of A$295 million for 2016, which equates to underlying earnings growing ten per cent over the previous year. The earnings growth came off the back of ING attracting a record 163,000 new customers over the year with total customers reaching 1.7 million.Total loans and savings both grew faster than system, at ten per cent, driving the underlying earnings growth, while statutory net profit after tax at $295 million was down six per cent because of a one-off RMBS sale portfolio and liquid asset sales in the previous period.ING Direct CEO Uday Sareen said he was keen to expand the digital bank's range of products."The two key pillars of the bank have been savings accounts and mortgages," he said.As of January, ING direct has become the fifth largest bank retail bank in Australia, in terms of deposits and the size of its mortgage book.Sareen said that, since adding Orange Everyday transaction accounts in 2009, one focus of ING Direct has been on becoming the primary bank for its customers. Last year ING racked up its 500,000th orange everyday customer.Its latest foray is into home and contents insurance, white labelling an auto and general product for new home loan customers. Sareen said the aim for 2017 is to consolidate that partnership and, towards the end of the year, consider the next product."While the opportunities so far have been in terms of consumer lending (both credit cards and personal loans) our view is that before the end of the year we should have both these offerings for our primary banking relationship customers," he said.The insurance product is competitive although Sareen was reluctant to reveal the degree to which it would be contributing to the bank's profits. He was equally adamant it was not a loss leader. The need to continually grow the deposit book is the only limit to ING's efforts at growing its asset book.And even at fifth largest mortgage provider, ING only accounts for three per cent of the Australian market, leaving plenty of room to move.Even more impressive is that ING Direct's cost to income ratio at the end of the 2016 year was 39 per cent according to its annual report.With his eyes fixed on growing the bank's commercial operations in Australia in order to diversify ING's lending away from a heavy concentration on residential mortgages (almost 90 per cent of its local loan book), Sareen points out that ING has the largest commercial network in Europe and at least 50 of the ING Group's customers there also have operations in Australia. He plans to turn that to the bank's advantage.Conversely Australian companies who have a banking relationship with ING direct looking to expand into Europe are also in his sights.