ING Bank CEO Melanie Evans
ING Bank (Australia) signed up 47,000 new customers in 2021, taking its active account numbers to more than two million, but it was not able to translate that increase into meaningful growth in lending or deposit taking.
ING focuses on attracting customers with its Orange Everyday transaction account. It gets high ratings for customer satisfaction and the quality of its products but its mortgage and deposit books only grew at about half the rate of system growth.
The bank made a net profit of A$549 million in the year to December 2021 – an increase of 46 per cent over the previous corresponding period.
Operating income rose six per cent to $1.2 billion, while operating expenses rose 2 per cent to $510 million. The cost-to-income ratio was 41.5 per cent.
There was a big turnaround in loan impairment – from an expense of $122 million in 2020 to a benefit of $67 million last year.
The retail bank mortgage book grew 3.4 per cent to $54.3 billion, about half the rate of system growth in 2021.
The business banking loan book fell 5.2 per cent to $4.4 billion, wholesale loans rose 4.3 per cent to $8.1 billion and the consumer loan portfolio fell 2.5 per cent to $307 million.
Retail deposits rose 4.9 per cent to $43.1 billion, compared with system growth of more than 10 per cent, while business deposits fell 37 per cent to $3.4 billion.
ING Bank chief executive Melanie Evans said in the annual report that an important part of the bank’s strategy is diversification, including the addition of more insurance offerings.
However, the bank’s non-interest income fell last year – down from $75 million in 2020 to $67 million in 2021.