Earnings call transcript: ING Groep’s Q3 2025 Focus on AI and Growth

ING Groep N.V. reported strong financial performance in its Q3 2025 earnings call, highlighting significant growth in net interest income and fee income. The company upgraded its full-year return on equity (ROE) outlook to over 12.5%. ING also launched a new AI chatbot across six markets, showcasing its commitment to innovation. The stock remained unchanged in early trading, reflecting stable investor sentiment.

Key Takeaways

• Net profit reached €6 billion over the past four quarters.
• Commercial net interest income and fee income grew significantly.
• ING launched a Gen AI chatbot in six markets.
• ROE outlook for the full year upgraded to over 12.5%.
• Sustainable finance volumes increased by 29% year-on-year.

Company Performance

ING Groep demonstrated robust performance in Q3 2025, with notable increases in commercial net interest income and fee income, the latter rising 15% year-on-year. The bank’s rolling average ROE hit 12.6%, prompting an upgrade in its full-year outlook. The expansion of its loan book in both retail and wholesale banking underlines ING’s strong market position.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Expected to reach €22.8 billion in 2025.
• Net profit: €6 billion over the last four quarters.
• ROE: 12.6% rolling average, with a full-year outlook of over 12.5%.

Outlook & Guidance

ING raised its fee growth outlook to over 10% for 2025 and expects total expenses to fall between €12.5 billion and €12.7 billion. The company is targeting 1 million new mobile primary customers in 2025, with continued growth anticipated in investment and trading accounts. ING projects potential further capital distributions in the future.

Executive Commentary

Steven van Rijswijk, CEO of ING, expressed confidence in the company’s momentum, stating, "We delivered another strong quarter, maintaining solid commercial momentum." He also highlighted the profitability of deposits, saying, "Deposits in general make money for us."

Risks and Challenges

• Economic uncertainties in Europe could impact growth.
• The introduction of AI may lead to job reductions, with an estimated 950 positions at risk in the Netherlands.
• Competitive pressures in deposit campaigns and customer acquisition.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of the Dutch election outcomes and the company’s capital allocation strategy. ING clarified its focus on fee growth and customer expansion, while also addressing the potential impact of AI on jobs.

Overall, ING Groep’s Q3 2025 earnings call showcased a company in a strong position, leveraging innovation and strategic growth to maintain its market leadership.

Full transcript - ING Groep NV (INGA) Q3 2025:

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. 2025 conference call. Before handing this conference call over to Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer of ING Groep N.V., let me first say that today’s comments may include forward-looking statements, such as statements regarding future developments in our business, expectations for our future financial performance, and any statement not involving a historical fact. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statement. A discussion of factors that may cause actual results to differ from those in any forward-looking statement is contained in our public filings, including our most recent annual report on Form 20-F filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and our earnings press release as posted on our website today. Furthermore, nothing in today’s comments constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Good morning, Steven. Over to you.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Good morning. Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our results call for the third quarter of 2025. I hope you’re all well and thank you for joining us. As usual, I’m joined by our CRO, Ljiljana Čortan, and our CFO, Tanate Phutrakul. While macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty remains prevalent, we have again delivered a strong quarter as we continue to execute our strategy to accelerate growth, increase our impact, and deliver customer value. In today’s presentation, I will start by sharing further insights on how our capital allocation will continue to fuel growth and increase returns. I will also update you on our long-term capital target. Thereafter, Tanate will walk you through the quarterly financials, and as always, we will be happy to take your questions at the end of the call. Now let’s move to slide two.

This slide highlights our continued strong commercial momentum in the third quarter, with solid growth across key areas. We have added nearly 200,000 mobile primary customers during the quarter, bringing growth in the last 12 months to over 1.1 million, well ahead of the target set at our Capital Markets Day. Our loan book expanded significantly in both retail and wholesale, and retail saw €8.6 billion in net core lending growth, driven mainly by residential mortgages. Wholesale banking also delivered a strong quarter, supported by trade finance services and lending, reflecting increased client financing needs. Core deposits declined slightly following substantial inflows in previous quarters, and this was largely due to the inclusion of promotional campaigns and seasonal spending patterns during the summer in retail banking. On the other hand, wholesale banking posted strong inflows, particularly in payments and cash management, financial markets, and cash pooling.

Customer balances grew at an annualized rate of 7% in the first nine months of 2025, keeping us well on track to achieve our 4% annual growth target. Fee income also continued its upward trend. Year to date, fees grew by 12%, and we have raised our full year 2025 growth outlook to more than 10%. Our four-quarter rolling average ROE stands at 12.6%, and we have also revised our full year ROE outlook upwards. Finally, we remain committed to supporting clients in their sustainability transitions, with sustainable finance volumes up 29% compared to the same period last year. Now let’s move to the next slide to discuss what this growth means for our capital generation. On slide three, we show how our continued commercial growth, further income diversification, and proactive cost measures have delivered strong capital generation.

Over the past four quarters, we have delivered €6 billion of net profit, which contributed an additional two percentage points to our CET1 capital ratio in line with the two prior years. This performance has enabled us to offer an attractive and sustainable dividend, with an ordinary cash dividend yield of nearly 6% in the last 12 months, and part of the capital we generated was reinvested to support profitable growth across both our business lines. Finally, thanks to our strong capital generation, we have been able to announce and execute additional distributions amounting to €4.5 billion over the last 12 months and €12.5 billion over the last three years. I move to slide four, where we summarize the total distributions to shareholders, building on what I just mentioned.

In line with our policy, we have consistently paid cash dividends, and we have been executing share buybacks for several years, and these actions have delivered a highly attractive yield while our share price has risen significantly. The €2 billion share buyback program, which started in May this year, was concluded earlier this week, and today we are announcing an additional €1.6 billion distribution. Of that amount, €1.1 billion will be returned in the form of a new share buyback, which will have a lasting positive impact on both earnings and dividends per share. In addition, we will pay a cash dividend of €500 million in January 2026, helping us to meet expected cash flow for the year. Looking ahead, we remain committed to delivering strong shareholder returns, and we will provide you an update with our first quarter 2026 results.

Now let’s move to slide five, where I will explain the rationale behind updating our CET1 capital ratio target. Here on page five, our expected fully loaded CET1 MDA has risen over the years from 10.5% in 2020 to around 11.2%, primarily due to regulatory changes. Consequently, we have revised our capital target and will now manage our CET1 capital ratio at around 13%. This target gives us a buffer of about 180 basis points above the MDA threshold, which we consider appropriate given the resilience of our business model and the fact that a significant portion of the MDA, over one percentage point, is attributable to countercyclical buffers. Any CET1 capital above 13% will be treated as excess and factored into our future capital planning, as evidenced by the additional distribution that we announced today.

In the previous slides, and I’m now at slide six, I outlined how we have deployed excess and newly generated capital over the past years, delivering strong shareholder returns. Although we are no longer in a position of excess capital, we remain firmly focused on generating strong capital going forward. Our allocation priorities are well defined. First, we will maintain an attractive shareholder return supported by our 50% dividend payout policy. Second, we will continue to invest in value accretive growth, further diversifying income streams, expanding the loan book in a capital-efficient way, and considering M&A opportunities that meet our strict criteria. These investments will help us to accelerate growth and enhance earnings potential as the return on new business is higher than the return on a share buyback. Finally, we will return any capital structurally above our CET1 target to shareholders.

Moving to slide eight, where we present our improved outlook for 2025. So far this year, we have added nearly 700,000 mobile primary customers and remain on track to achieve our annual growth target of 1 million in 2025. We have raised our expectation for fee growth and now anticipate fees to come in more than 10% higher than last year. As a result, we have also increased our outlook for total income, which we now expect to reach around €22.8 billion this year. Proven expense management remains a key priority. We continue to take proactive measures to operate efficiently while selectively investing for growth. Despite additional incidental expenses this quarter, we continue guiding total costs towards the lower end of the €12.5 to €12.7 billion range. As explained earlier, our CET1 target has been updated to around 13%.

Given our improved outlook for income and disciplined approach on costs, we have also raised our ROE expectation for this year to more than 12.5%. We will share our outlook for 2026 and revisit our 2027 targets with the fourth quarter results. Now I’ll hand over to Tanate, who will walk you through the third quarter financial results in more detail, starting on slide ten. Tanate.

Tanate Phutrakul, Chief Financial Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you, Steven. Yes, on slide 10, it shows the development of total income, which has increased further this quarter. It was close to the record level we achieved one year ago. Commercial NII rose by a strong performance in wholesale banking lending and the conclusion of a promotional savings campaign in retail banking Germany. These factors more than offset the impact of lower average ECB deposit facility rates and a stronger euro. Fee income continues its upward trend, growing by 15% year on year. Most of this growth is structural, which is why we have raised our full year expectations. Finally, all other income, which includes other NII, investment income, and other income, was supported by continued strong results in financial markets and treasury, as well as the final dividend payment from our equity stake in Bank of Beijing.

Let’s discuss slide 11, where we show the development of our customer balances. We delivered another quarter of strong loan growth across both retail and wholesale banking. Net core lending increased by €14.2 billion. Retail contributed €8.6 billion of that, driven by continued growth in mortgages and increasing consumer lending portfolio, primarily in Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands. Wholesale banking lending also posted strong growth, as a relatively large number of deals originated in earlier quarters were converted in the third quarter. On the liability side, core deposits declined by around €200 million after significant inflows in prior quarters. The decline was largely attributable to outflows in Germany and Belgium after the conclusion of promotional savings campaigns, with part of these funds moving into investment products. Seasonal effects also played a role as customers spent more during the summer holiday period.

Wholesale banking posted a strong inflow, reflecting increased deposit volume in payment and cash management area, financial markets, and other cash pooling business. On slide 12, you can see that commercial NII grew quarter on quarter. This increase is particularly strong in retail Germany’s liability NII after the end of the bonus rates for fresh money from a promotional campaign. This was also the main driver behind the one basis point improvement in liability margin. Lending NII also rose due to robust volume growth in wholesale banking lending. The lending margin remained stable as the growth in wholesale banking lending offset the impact of continued growth of our residential mortgage portfolio, which delivered a higher return on equity but lower average margin. For full year 2025, our outlook for liability margin and lending margin is unchanged at around 100 basis points and around 125 basis points, respectively.

We expect commercial NII to come in between €15.2 billion and €15.3 billion. It is worth noting that the higher than expected NII growth in the third quarter was partly driven by a large number of transactions in the wholesale bank, which has been in the pipeline for an extended period of time. Turning to slide 13, fee growth remains strong with a 15% increase year on year, driven by structural revenue drivers across both retail and wholesale banking. In retail banking, growth was supported by a continued rise in mobile primary customers, which boosted daily banking fees. Investment products had a strong quarter, reflecting an increase in the number of investment accounts and higher assets under management.

Wholesale banking delivered a quarterly record fee income of €383 million, driven by strong performance in lending, supported by a greater number of lead roles, increased loan underwriting activities, and higher lending volume. Given the strong performance in the first nine months of this year, we are confident that we can grow our fee income by more than 10% in 2025. On slide 14, we show the development of all other income. Income from the financial markets is mostly driven by client activity. We continue to support our clients through volatile market conditions, mostly with FX and interest rate management. Income from our financial stakes this quarter included a final dividend from our stake in Bank of Beijing, while other income also benefited from a gain on sale of an associate company in Belgium. Now on to slide 15.

Our expenses, excluding regulatory costs and incidental items, rose less than 3% year on year, reflecting our prudent approach. The increase was largely reflecting wage inflation and our ongoing investment in business growth and scalability. On the growth side, we continue investing in our customer acquisition and product development, including expanding our offer for new customer segments. Another good example is business banking, where we broaden our product suite and make it easier to digitally onboard customers. In terms of scalability, we focus on enhancing and strengthening our tech platform. At the same time, we’re seeing benefits from operational efficiencies, which help offset part of the cost increase. We remain committed to digitizing our services to further strengthen our operational leverage going forward. We’re actively integrating generative AI capabilities through our organization. Our Gen AI chatbot is now live in six markets, providing improved customer support.

In consumer finance, we use AI to assist applications and process loan applications automatically. Incidental expenses are mostly related to restructuring provisions for planned FTE reductions in retail banking, which are expected to result in €30 million in annualized cost savings once fully implemented. We still expect total expenses to finish at the lower end of the previously guided range. The outlook includes incidental items recorded in the first nine months, whereby continued focus on operational efficiencies will lead to some incidental costs in the fourth quarter. Now let’s move on to risk costs on the next slide. Total risk costs were €326 million this quarter, equivalent to 19 bps of average customer lending, which is below our through-the-cycle average and reflects the quality of our loan book.

Net addition to stage three provision amounts to €361 million, mainly due to collective provisioning in retail banking and a number of newly defaulted files in wholesale banking. The stage three ratio remains stable. Stage one and stage two risk costs show a net release of €35 million, mostly reflecting portfolio movements. Overall, we remain confident in the strength and quality of our loan book. On slide 17, we show development of our quarter one ratio, which increased compared to last quarter. Quarter one capital increase on the back of strong capital generation, partly offset by dividend reserving and a lower market value of our stake in Bank of Beijing. The total risk-weighted assets remain broadly stable. Credit risk-weighted assets, excluding FX impact, increased by €2.2 billion this quarter, mainly due to volume growth.

This was partly offset by a change in the profile of the loan book, equity revaluations, and various other effects. Operational risk-weighted assets remain flat, while market risk-weighted assets decreased by €1.7 billion. The announced additional distribution of €1.6 billion will have a pro forma impact of 48 basis points on the Q1 ratio, bringing it more in line with our updated target. Now I’ll hand back to Steven to wrap up today’s presentation.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Thanks, Tanate. Before we move to Q&A, let me recap the key takeaways from today’s presentation. We delivered another strong quarter, maintaining solid commercial momentum that is fully aligned with our growth strategy, and the sustained performance translated into robust capital generation, enabling attractive shareholder returns while continuing to selectively invest in our business. Today, we announced a €1.6 billion distribution, bringing our CET1 capital ratio in line with our updated target. Going forward, we remain committed to deploying capital to fuel growth and further enhance returns. Finally, we have improved our outlook for 2025, expecting higher fees, stronger total income, and a return on equity above 12.5%. With that, I would like to open the floor for Q&A. Operator, over to you.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: We will now take our first question from Delphine Lee. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hello. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. My first one is just on capital. Just wondering, as you highlighted in your slides, your CET1 requirements have been going up quite a bit. Do you think we are entering like a phase of stabilization from here, or could there be more pressure? On the other hand, do you expect anything on, you know, is there any hope of that requirement going down, maybe on mortgage floors or anything like that? Just so we have, you know, better visibility on how you run your CET1. Then just on NII and deposits, more generally speaking, the retail deposit outflows were quite significant this quarter, which, you know, there has been some seasonality.

I was just wondering, a little bit, what you’re seeing so far in the quarter and if the trends that you’ve seen in Q3 in terms of the strength in wholesale banking and the liability margins, slight improvement. Is there anything that has been confirmed for Q4 so far? Thank you so much.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you very much, Delphine. On capital, we currently do not see additional pressure upwards on capital. All the countercyclical buffers and other elements that we could see that could potentially have come and that we have factored in into our capital target. Of course, we continue to talk to supervisors about avoiding duplication or gold plating between different supervisors in different markets. We also talk about the mortgage floor that could come in, but only in 2032. That is a long time away. We will also talk about that to see if that can be removed. Those discussions are ongoing. On deposits, the outflows are, there was an outflow of about €7 billion in retail and an inflow of about €7 billion in wholesale. Our deposits are approximately flat, have minus €200 million.

What we can see is that these deposit outflows in retail came from marketing campaigns predominantly in Germany, which ended, and that always then leads to part of outflows of the marketing campaign money that we got in. That is that effect. There was a third quarter effect, which is a seasonal effect, which then is the end of the holidays. During the holidays, people spend more. Typically, with the higher spending pattern at the start of the third quarter, you also see deposits there coming down. That is typically for this quarter. That is not a pattern that we would expect in the fourth quarter. Today, if you look at the total deposits, we have an annualized growth in the first nine months of 6%. We are happy with our deposit inflows during the year.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We will now take our next question from Namita Samtani of Barclays Bank. Please go ahead.

Morning, and thanks for taking my questions. My first question, how do you expect your lending margins to grow from 125 bps today to the 125 to 130 bps guidance over 2026 to 2027, given there’s a lot of private credit competition and many banks offering competitive pricing, especially for wholesale? Any thoughts there would be much appreciated. Secondly, I saw an article on Bloomberg that ING Groep N.V. estimated that around 950 positions are at risk in the Netherlands by the end of 2026 as artificial intelligence is rolled out. I know it was just a forecast given to the country’s employee insurance agency, but I just wondered why you aren’t doing this AI initiative in other countries. For example, the cost to income in the Netherlands looks decent compared to Belgium and Australia retail, where it’s 60 to 70%, which looks quite poor. Thanks.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: All right. Thank you, Namita. I’ll do the question on the 950 positions. Tanate will talk about the lending margin. As a matter of fact, this is an announcement that we have to do with a collective announcement. This is an estimate that we then officially post with the Labor Insurance Agency as the current estimate of how many jobs will be affected in this country. The jobs that are affected are part of it is in wholesale banking, as we announced earlier, and part sits in our processes, such as less manual or personnel work in contact centers and/or more digitalization in lending and consumer lending processes. By the way, we do not only do this in the Netherlands. We do this everywhere around the world. The Gen AI chatbot has been rolled out or is being rolled out in six countries already, as an example.

It’s just the announcement that we are compulsory to make in this country that has led to the announcement. It is not because we’re only doing this in this country, but this pertains to employees in this country.

Tanate Phutrakul, Chief Financial Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Namita, just on the margin, we have seen margin compression down to 125 because of a greater share of mortgage financing in our mix. We do expect that will normalize going forward. Also, that’s a factor that the funding profile of our mortgage backbook has caused margin compression, which we expect to subside over the next few periods. We do expect return to growth in the wholesale banking loan growth, which comes with a higher margin. That’s why we do expect that over time, our lending margin will range between 125 and 130.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thanks very much. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Tarik El Mejjad of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Two questions from my side. First of all, I would like to come back on the tech investments and AI. You’ve been one among those banks that had some AML issues a few years ago, and you had to ramp up your FTEs in the KYC and client onboarding functions. Have you invested in the meantime in AI in that area? Could that actually, I know you’ve already run down a lot of these costs, but is this something you’ve been investing in in parallel? Also, in terms of embedded AI in products, where you are and what your thinking is in the future. The second question is on capital redeployment. Thanks, Steven. You’ve been very clear about the outlook for where the capital generation goes. That’s very, very clear. In terms of consolidation and M&A, you’ve been very vocal and transparent about it.

How are you thinking involved in this current rate environment and where your focus will go? Thank you.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you, Tarik. Yeah, first on the tech AI investments, I think there are five main areas that we currently are deploying or starting to deploy Gen AI. We already work with AI for the last 10 years, but Gen AI, which is, let’s say, AI on steroids, if you will, there is a clear focus that is coding in the technology space, that is lending, that is hyper-personalized marketing, that is contact centers, and that is KYC. For sure, we are investing in digitalizing KYC and also get this supported with AI and Gen AI. That will, of course, also have an impact on our processes and could also indeed have an impact on how we work with our staff. Yeah, that could be an interesting part of the business where we can use digitalization much more than we did that in the past.

When it comes to capital deployment and our thinking on M&A, it has not changed. I think that what we want to do is we want to make more impact and be more relevant in the markets in which we operate. That means that there are in-market, so market by market, looking at market segments that we currently do not have, for example, business banking or consumer lending or private banking, wealth management type of activities, or we look to increase in size, which has skill benefits. Those are the areas in which we are looking. Of course, it has to make sense from an ROE point of view.

Thank you.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Giulia Miotto of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I will start with one on NII. Tanate, I think I heard you saying that the guide for the year is $15.2 to $15.3 billion, which is somewhat surprising because I would have thought it was almost a slam dunk that you would be on the $15.3 billion side of things because I thought NII is improving in the second half, specifically in Q4. You’ve got the benefit from the end of the Belgian campaign. I think a $3.9 billion sort of NII for Q4 was almost in the bag. I think you made some comments around seeing some wholesale banking transaction closing in Q3. I don’t know if you can quantify that, if there is any sort of non-recurring things in Q3 that we should keep in mind.

Yes, I would welcome your comment on NII for the rest of the year. Secondly, there have been quite a few incidentals recently on the cost line. If I look at the past five years, the average is more or less $200 million a year. Is this something that we should think about as recurring or not really, and you plan not to do more going forward? Thank you very much.

All right, I give both questions to Tanate, starting with NII.

Tanate Phutrakul, Chief Financial Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Yes, Julia. I think we do have some tailwind coming our way. You know, the ECB rates later today, we’ll see what Christine Lagarde says. I think we see a bottom to the short rates and a positive U-curve. That’s a good tailwind. We do expect that will have a positive impact on our NII, not only for 2025 but 2026 as well. The reason why we gave a tight guidance of €15.2 to €15.3 billion is the fact that in Q3, we have seen quite a catch-up in the wholesale banking NII growth. If you remember in previous quarterly calls, we said that our pipeline in Q1 and Q2 was fairly robust, but customers were not converting them into loans or transactions. That catch-up has happened in the third quarter in a pretty significant way. That’s why we give this guidance of between €15.2 and €15.3 billion.

Now, on restructuring provision, you know it’s been our approach that we don’t take big major program restructuring provision over multiple years, but we take provision when we have a clear business case, it is concise, and that it can be achieved over 12 to 18 months. That’s our policy going forward. That’s why we gave a bit of an outlook to the market that we do expect a continued efficiency program and that we do expect to take additional restructuring provision for additional efficiencies in Q4.

Thanks.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Benoit Petrarque of Bernstein Autonomous LLP. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes, good morning. First, just as an intro, I just wanted to get your view on the outcome from the Dutch election. It looks a relatively good outcome, a center-right outcome. I just wanted to get your view on that. The first question is actually on the ROE targets. You’ve upgraded 2025 several times, yet you’ve kept 2027 ROE unchanged. Do you share my view, at least, that there’s more confidence in the 14% and potentially upside to the 14%? I also wanted to check with you if you see the growth momentum currently, yeah, a bit more pronounced than what you were anticipating back in June 2024 at the CMD. That’s the number one. Number two is on the efficiencies. I think the tech side is looking quite promising. You just mentioned that the use of digitalization is also much more than in the past.

You’ve put through also restructuring charges in retail. I was wondering if all those kinds of efficiency gains were embedded in the 3% to 4% OpEx CAGR targets back in June 2024, or do you see things a bit accelerating on the efficiency side and the digitalization side? Thank you.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: All right. Thank you for the questions. I will take the question on the elections. Tanate will take the questions on the upside on growth and the efficiency, although I have the feeling that Tanate will say something around, "We will further update you upon our fourth quarter results 2025." I’ll leave that to him. Regarding the outcome of the elections, yeah, look, I mean, I’m saying something that you know as well, obviously, that stability of a government and of a coalition, and thereby a government that can take long-term decisions, is good for society, is good for the economy, and is good for a bank. I think that the meeting of minds in the previous coalition was not there. I think that this is a new opportunity to create a coalition that is more stable and can look more long-term. I’m really hoping for that.

Secondly, I think also the parties that are a bit bigger are more pro-Europe. I think that from a business point of view, it helps to foster international ties. Therefore, it’s also good to sit in a European setting, whereby I really think that people should continue to look at continuing and implementing the savings and investment union. That could help here as well. Yeah. I think thirdly, areas around consistency of policy, around simplification, but also sustainability would also help. Yes, I think it is good if we get a government that can create longer-term stability.

Tanate Phutrakul, Chief Financial Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Benoit on guidance from CMD. We are more confident about our 2025 and our 2027 ROE target. As Steven said, we’ll update the longer-term targets later. I think compared to CMD, volumes are better than we planned, fee growth is better than we planned, and the cost discipline has been strong, right? Given that and given the rates development, we have basically upgraded in the last two or three quarters our ROE guidance for 2025. I’ll leave it to February to give you more formal guidance for the coming period. On cost reduction program, yes, these are plans which we have an ambition to deliver, and it’s in line with our Capital Markets Day guidance.

Thank you very much.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. In the interest of time, we kindly ask each analyst to limit yourself to two questions only. Thank you. We’ll now move on to our next question from Benjamin Goy of Deutsche Bank AG. Please go ahead. Hi.

Yes, hi. Good morning. I have two questions also from my side. One is a follow-up on the net interest income, particularly implied for Q4. In Q2, when you gave the guidance, you assumed one more rate cut, which hasn’t materialized and might also not happen today. I’m wondering whether there is a bit more upside baked into your guidance now as compared to August. Secondly, on the wholesale bank, maybe can you give more color on the loan growth? Where is it coming from? Countries, which type of product? Also, the newly defaulted files in wholesale banking, any trends you can see or industries, any background would be appreciated. Thank you.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: All right. I will talk about the wholesale banking growth. Ljiljana Čortan will talk about the risks or risk costs in wholesale banking. And Tanate Phutrakul will talk about NII. On the growth in wholesale banking, these are two areas. First of all, these are larger underwritings and syndicated loans. Large investments that companies are doing, for that they have larger transactions and underwritings that we have been doing with them. We already told you in the previous quarters that the pipelines were strong in wholesale banking. We saw the pipelines growing, but the conversion into real business was not there. Undoubtedly, that had something to do with the uncertainty in the market. At least it’s a good signal that companies are now investing. Now, is that a trend or not? That goes a bit too far for today.

At least it’s good that companies are starting to invest, and that has led to a larger underwriting business and related lending fees. You also see that in the fees coming through. The second area in that economic activity, you see that also in trade finance services. Those have been the areas of growth in wholesale banking, leading to around €5.5 billion growth in the wholesale banking, next to the around €6.5 to €7 billion growth in retail banking and mortgages. We go to risk. Yes.

Ljiljana Čortan, Chief Risk Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Good morning, Ben. Yeah, as you’ve seen, the third quarter risk costs in general were at slightly below the cycle or at a cycle with 19 bps, let me say. The same is also valid for the wholesale bank specifically. If you are looking at wholesale bank, they’re slightly below through the cycle average. The majority of provisions correctly come from the S3 provisions, so stage three provisions. However, they are higher than previous quarter, but they are lower and significantly lower if you are looking at the third quarter 2024. If you are looking at the newly defaulted cases, I cannot say I see a specific sector-wide pattern. What we’ve observed are actually more a result of idiosyncratic events at certain clients rather than systemic observations.

Needless to say, we remain vigilant because despite the global economy doing a bit better than we expected, there is still uncertainty around how the economic policy, specifically tariffs and regulation deflects, will impact it going forward. So far, so good, I would say.

Tanate Phutrakul, Chief Financial Officer, ING Groep N.V.: On rates, Ben, I think the reduction in rates has no material impact on our 2025 financials. I would refer you to the replication impact of the forward curve that we provide on page 24. You see that it has a positive impact in 2026 and 2027, but it is immaterial for 2025.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Shreya of Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, and thank you very much for taking my questions. Just on your 13% CET1 capital ratio target, you’re obviously at 12.9% this quarter, pro forma for the distributions you announced. Looking forward, as you look to estimates, are you comfortable being slightly below this number on an interim results basis? What’s the leeway within that circa 13% number? Thanks very much.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Yeah, good spot. Indeed, we are comfortable with dipping into it a little bit. This is what it shows today. It is indeed around target. I don’t want to mathematically every day of the week be at 13%. It will be around that number. You can see now that it is 12.9%, so it’s a bit below it. What we then say is that if we have structural capital excess over 13%, then we call it an excess, and then we will look at distribution.

Okay. Thank you, Ben.

Thank you.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Chris Hallam of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. Just to begin with some Q4 housekeeping, the €30 million of annualized cost savings you flag on slide 15, when do you expect those to be fully implemented? Are there any reasons why fees would be down year over year in the fourth quarter? Even if I assume flat, then I’m going to get to a full year number closer to €4.6 billion than €4.4 billion on fees. Second, on strategy, you know there’s a link obviously between deposit campaigns, the customer retention, and then fee growth. Do you get a sense that that connection is strengthening or that the strategy is becoming more predictable or more lucrative?

Maybe on the other hand, if you look at what’s coming in Germany, there’s more demand for borrowing, maybe a greater need across the banking sector for funding and liquidity in that market to react to that borrowing demand, that maybe a more competitive deposit landscape. Does that change at all the economics for ING of the deposit campaign pipe strategy in Germany? Thank you.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: All right. On the €30 million cost savings, that will feed through in 2026 per annum. Is there any reason for the fees to go down in the fourth quarter? That depends on economic activity. You’ve seen that the growth in our fees has been 7.5% alpha. We saw a very strong lending fee in wholesale banking because of the execution or the conversion of the pipeline. We need to see what is the level of activity, but we remain confident on our fee growth. That’s why we said the fee growth for the year will be higher than 10% rather than at the higher end of the 5% to 10% range. Just correct me if I understood your question in the wrong way, but you were wondering if there’s a connection between growth in lending and fees and if there’s more competition in deposits.

That’s how I translated your question. Was that your question?

Basically, if you think about your deposit as a loss-leading product to generate fee growth in the future, you’ve got to think about the deposit cost as the investment of the ROI. Does this deposit cost do climb up? At what point do you think about revisiting the size and the scale of that?

All right.

That led to the sanction campaign?

Yeah. I mean, look, we see deposits not as a loss leader. Deposits in general make money for us. That’s why you’ve seen that we started many years ago as ING Direct in many countries as a savings and deposit bank. Now, if you talk specifically about the deposits that we are doing in Germany or elsewhere, a campaign can either be aimed at fresh money, and that should show a positive payback of between 6 and 12 months. That’s to existing customers and new money for existing customers. If you look at campaigns that are aimed at new-to-bank customers, those typically have a payback period of two to three years. We have done these types of actions and campaigns for decades. They’re highly data-driven, which means we can really monitor who we target, how much money will stay in the bank, how much business they do with us afterwards.

We apply continuously these learnings going forward. Of course, these campaigns with all the data that we have now will become much more targeted and much more specific. It’s one of the success factors of ING, and we will continue to do so.

Okay, thank you.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Anke Reingen of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you very much. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Just very small questions. Given that, do you think you have more potential for cutting your deposit rates, given that it seems rates have sort of plateaued? Just on the lending margin, is it basically fair to assume it will decline in Q4, given your comment about the Q3 benefit in wholesale banking? I’m sorry, just a small follow-up question. In terms of your capital updates, you said the next update is in Q1. Just to confirm, we should assume you keep the same cadence as Q1 and Q3 updates. Thank you very much.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Yes. Let me confirm that indeed what I meant in my presentation is that in terms of capital distribution or how we look at our capital, that will be the six-month update intervals that we have, so end of Q1 figures, end of Q3 figures as we have done today. Tanate, lending margins and deposit rates?

Tanate Phutrakul, Chief Financial Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Yes. Deposit rate, I think it’s a balance, right? We don’t give forward statement on rate cuts or commercial action, but it’s a balance between volume growth, competition, and profitability. I think we give our continued outlook that the liability margin will remain at around 100 basis points for this year and rise to between 100 to 110 in 2026 and onwards. That’s on rate cuts. Sorry, your second question?

It was just, is it fair to assume the lending margin declines in Q4 given your wholesale banking comment?

Got it. I think that really depends on wholesale banking and retail banking activity, mortgage mix, wholesale banking loans. I think our outlook is that margin on lending will remain flat at around 125 basis points.

Thank you.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Farquhar Murray of Bernstein Autonomous LLP. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Morning all. Two questions, if I may. Firstly, on the recent board appointments, I just wondered if you might flesh out the reasonings behind those, both on Ade Lemma and Ljiljana Čortan. Strategically, I’d expect probably a lot of continuity, but I just wondered if there might be any nuances we should read into those appointments in terms of skill sets for the future. I’m sure Ljiljana might actually have views to express on her own. Secondly, on the increased CET1 capital ratio target, could I ask how those will be cascaded down into the businesses? In particular, will that be incrementally priced into lending rates? Thanks.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. What a good nice question about the change of the board positions. Ljiljana Čortan is sitting next to me, so I will not say anything else than nice words, obviously. Joking aside, Ljiljana has done and is doing a fantastic job in the risk domain and has not only good experience in risk, but also good experience in wholesale banking in her previous life and knows the organization because she has now been with us for five years. I think that with Andrew John Milton Bester moving on to the non-executive phase of his life, I think I’m very happy with Ljiljana in that post to continuously drive the strategy that we have in wholesale banking and also further increase the capital efficiency and the ROE improvements that we want to make in wholesale banking.

When it comes to Ida, Ida is a very experienced CFO in a large European bank with also end risk and wholesale banking experience, so very broad-based. I think she will be an excellent fit also giving external outside-in perspectives to ING Groep N.V. to further improve and focus on our cost discipline that we have here in the bank and help me with potential M&A if we come across it. That’s the background of those candidates.

Tanate Phutrakul, Chief Financial Officer, ING Groep N.V.: On the capital targets, you would have noticed that even in our third quarter results, the divisional ROE is now based on 13% of risk-weighted assets. That will be communicated more widely to our teams. I think we also look when we adjust to 13% that many of our wholesale banking peers also operate at around 13%. We don’t expect a competitive disadvantage of this new target materially in the wholesale bank.

Thanks.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Matthew Clark of Mediobanca. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

All right. Good morning. A couple of questions on, one question on the two deposit campaigns and your retention rates there. It looks from the German campaign that you retained less than your normal two-thirds rule of thumb. Do you confirm that? Also, on the Belgian campaign, can you just confirm whether with both of them you got the return on investment that you expected, or whether there’s anything to learn from those campaigns? Thanks.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: On the retention rates, where it was lower, we have sometimes said that we typically retain about two-thirds of the money, and that is not different this time around. That goes for both campaigns, actually. Also in Belgium, we expect a strong return on investment. There is a good retention, and now a number of these customers are turning into primary customers. That was a very successful campaign.

Great, thanks very much.

Thank you.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Cyril of BNP Paribas Exchange. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three, if I may. One on fee growth. This is the second upgrading guidance we have for this year. It does look like the momentum is quite strong and resilient. I’m just wondering what elements of that momentum we can take and extrapolate maybe into next year. The second would be on SRTs. I know we have a transaction planned for Q4. Do we have any visibility on any other transaction maybe for 2026? Thank you.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: All right. On fee growth, it starts with growth in customers. If we have more primary mobile customers, then we have more customers that do more with us because primary customers typically are customers that choose ING as their main or one of their main banks. We have been growing our customer base, again, with about 200,000 new primary customers. If you look at that for the last four quarters, that was 1.1 million. We aim for about 1 million per year. We’re well on track to do this this year as well. That’s one. Two, we are increasing the activities with our customers. You have seen that on investment products that more and more customers take a trade account with ING. That is currently around 4.6 million people who trade with ING. Every quarter, I say it was 4.4. It was 4.2.

Every quarter, we add about 100,000 to 200,000 new customers who trade with ING. That’s very good. The better thing is even that we have over 40 million clients. You can only imagine how big the upside is. We are now focusing on that segment much more than we did a few years ago. The same goes for insurance distribution. That is now a separate line in the fee bar charts that you see on the pages. That’s also growing steadily. That’s an annuity type of business. We broaden up our activities with our customers. Therefore, you see that 75% of the fee growth that we see typically is alpha-driven. We are very comfortable with the momentum that we have. That’s also why we updated our fee growth for the year. We are very confident to make the 2027 5%, €5 billion target for that year.

Tanate Phutrakul, Chief Financial Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you, Cyril. Just on capital discipline, I think if you look at the 2025 Q3 result for the wholesale bank, despite the volume growth, the capital usage of risk-weighted assets was almost flat, indicating strong capital discipline and capital velocity in the wholesale bank. Yes, we are in dialogue with our regulator to get the final approval for our SRT in Q4. We do expect that transaction to be done. It would have a roughly 10 bps positive impact on our core tier one.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question from Seamus Murphy of Carrigeal. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Two questions, please. Can you just briefly talk about the expected evolution of full-time employees? Because when I look at the quarterly numbers, I mean, we’re up to 63,000 now, I think, in Q3. That’s kind of up 5,500 since the start of this rate cycle. We’re up again significantly year to date. I think it’s up another 1,500. I appreciate the question earlier in relation to the savings that could emerge from internal innovation. Should we continue to expect the net growth in FTEs into 2027? The pace of FTEs kind of continues to surprise, especially when the average salary is around $120,000. That would be great. Thank you. Secondly, just on NII, at your CMD, you spoke about this 4% to 5% growth in total income off a $22 billion base, which would have given us about $25.5 billion at the top end in 2027.

You had guided fee growth, which is obviously stronger, and the other income, which we assume could be broadly flat. When I think about NII, we have a much more beneficial rate curve now versus then. I suppose when we think about it, the real kind of issue so far has been the fact that the deposit beta has risen significantly into 2025 in your retail Eurozone area. I think it’s about 44% still. I’m just kind of wondering, is there something going on in terms of the dynamic in terms of the deposit pricing that we should think about? I know you’ve got 110 basis points of deposit margin in next year, sorry, or into 2027. Certainly, it seems to be relative to the CMD with a much more beneficial rate curve, the NII should have been an awful lot higher.

I’m just wondering, does this inflect significantly into 2027 to meet kind of like what you would have expected to the CMD, or how should we think about that? Thank you.

Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you very much. In terms of the FTEs, yeah, what you see, I think, on the press release is the internal number. You can never look at that in isolation. You have the internal FTEs, then you have the external FTEs, then you have the work packages. That is how you get to your cost. To give you a little bit of an indication of that, our total internal and external FTEs in this year have been around flattish. We have more internalized FTEs, and that’s why you see that number moving up. In the end, we look at investing in businesses to grow our business and increase our revenue over RWA with the right return. We want to do that in a scalable manner. Make sure that we have positive jaws, and that’s where we want to go to.

That’s how we look at costs and how I’m doing these actions and efficiency actions that also Tanate Phutrakul talked about. In terms of your calculations on growth in fees and the NII levels that could potentially be higher based on the current rate environment and the growth in our lending, it’s well noted. Thank you for noticing it. We will provide further updates on our outlook as per the fourth quarter figures in early 2026.

Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I would like to thank everybody for joining the call this morning. Good luck and a great day I wish you, and I hope to speak to you soon again. In any case, we will speak early 2026 on the fourth quarter figures. Thank you very much.

Conference Moderator, ING Groep N.V.: Thank you. This concludes today’s call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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