Enterprise Risk Management at ING Group

ING's roots went back to 1845 when its earliest predecessor, the Netherlands Insurance Co., was founded. In 1903, it added life insurance. In 1963 it merged with the century old Nationale Life Insurance Bank to form Nationale-Nederland (NN). Over the next three decades, the company grew primarily through acquisitions in Europe, North America, and Australia. In 1986, NN became the first European life insurance company to be licensed in Japan. Another predecessor of ING, the Rijkspostspaarbank, was founded in 1881 to provide Dutch citizens with simple post office savings accounts. In 1918 the Postcheque-en Girondienst (giro) system was established to allow people to use vouchers drawn on their savings accounts to pay bills.

In 1991, as the Europe economic union became a reality, and barriers between banking and insurance began to fall, NN merged with NMB Postbank to form Internationale Nederland Groep (ING). In the US, where insurance and banking were legally divided, the company "debanked" itself in order to keep its more lucrative insurance operations (but retained the right to provide banking services to those operations). In the 1990s, ING sought to expand its investment banking and finance operations. In 1995, it took over UK-based Barings Bank after Nicholas Leeson, a trader in Barings' Singapore office, lost huge sums of money in derivatives trading. The acquisition brought ING into the limelight.