ING To Cut Dutch Workforce By 1,700 As It Moves To Omni-channel Approach

(RTTNews) - Dutch banking firm ING Group (ING) Tuesday said it will take measures to move to an omni-channel approach to create consistent customer service.

The measures will be to further expand digital banking, strengthen local advisory capabilities in the branch network and to make additional IT investments in its Dutch retail banking unit.

The further digitisation of ING's banking services, the reduction of IT systems to be managed and the increased number of automated processes would result in reduction of ING's Dutch workforce by 1,700 FTEs over a three-year period, mostly at the headquarters of ING Retail Banking and in the back offices, call centres and IT departments. .

For this, the company will book a pre-tax provision of around 320 million euros in the fourth quarter. The steps will also lead to significant cost savings in the coming years.

In addition, ING will reduce the number of positions employed by external suppliers by 1,075.

Currently, ING uses different IT systems for mobile app, website, call centre and branches. By moving to an omni-channel approach, customers can do all their banking digitally and the information will be available across all channels.

To support the omni-channel approach, ING will make further IT investments amounting to a total of approximately 200 million euros from 2015 to 2017. Total structural gross cost savings in addition to the existing running programs amount to approximately 270 million euros.

For this, a pre-tax redundancy provision of EUR 320 million will be booked in the fourth quarter of 2014.