Australia's largest online only bank remains respectful of the tech-focussed financial services community, rather than seeing it as a possible source of challenger businesses. After all, ING Direct was itself viewed as a fintech, one of the first branchless banks.And that level of scale is important, noted Lisa Claes, executive director customer delivery at ING Direct in Australia."None [of the fintechs] today have taken on the whole end to end process but they seem to be effective at targeting a particular aspect of a process that is under-served or friction heavy," said Claes."I don't see them as a threat at all. They are all working to provide a better customer experience and that's a good thing. There is an enormous opportunity for partnerships, a fact we are recognising elsewhere in ING. "We have a specific venture capital fund dedicated to such investments and a governance structure around joint ventures with fintech partners. ING have signed up around 20 around the world, such as the deal between ING in Spain and [the automated business line of credit provider] Kabbage last year."Claes made these observations ahead of the formal launch of the "digital direct" bank's newly renovated banking platform, a key part of ING Direct's long-term plan to become the main financial institution to all of its 1.6 million customers.This means that while the 'one-stop shop' approach to the banking platform upgrade will ensure any partnership with a smaller tech firm might run more smoothly, this would be more of a 'nice by-product' than the primary purpose of the platform rebuild.And commenting further on the bank's very selective use of technology, Claes noted that while some biometric measures have been adopted by ING Direct, plenty of others - such as facial recognition systems - have thus far been kept at arm's length."We look at everything, but we put [every system under consideration] through a pretty strict customer value lens. As a low-cost provider we have to be very careful how we spend our money," said Claes."Some of the innovations in the tech space sound good, but when we've looked at a cost benefit to the customer and to us, they haven't made sense."For instance, a voice recognition system may not be ideal for a bank that prides itself on the fact that many of its customers don't want to talk to a bank."It might be a great idea but if it's not scalable, it won't work."