ING’s ROTE upgrade: growth, AI, and a rebalanced capital engine
ING delivers a 17% ROTE, upgrades 2026-27 guidance, and pushes Agentic AI and private banking to the fore.
INGA.AS · Earnings Call · 2026-07-30
A quarter that beat the plan
ING reported a strong second quarter, with commercial momentum translating into an ROTE of 17%, well ahead of its own mid-teens ambition. The bank added 377,000 mobile primary customers, grew core lending 8% annualized, and saw deposits rise 8.5%, while fee income climbed 14% year-on-year. As CEO Steven van Rijswijk put it in the prepared remarks: “our excellent second quarter results demonstrate that this commercial performance is translating into improved operating leverage and sustainable earnings growth” — Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-07-30. The customer base is not just growing in raw numbers—mobile primary customer growth signals deeper engagement. “mobile primary customer growth is not just about acquiring new customers, Mobile primary customer growth indicates that we are deepening the role that ING plays in their financial lives” — Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-07-30. This trajectory is underpinned by the bank’s Agentic AI initiatives and a widening retail footprint.Agentic mortgages and a widening retail footprint
Agentic mortgages are a flagship product: the bank has deployed AI to process more complex mortgage files, cutting time-to-yes from seven days to five. CEO van Rijswijk noted: “Agentic mortgages are a prime example of how our AI capabilities allow us to achieve true scalable growth” — Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-07-30. Concurrently, ING launched a new global subscription model for daily banking and began rolling out conversational banking in its mobile app. These moves are part of a deliberate evolution from product-centric to relationship-based banking, and they build on prior commitments to technology. In an earlier call, van Rijswijk had acknowledged the promise of AI: “We do clearly see benefits of AI coming through” — Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-01-29. The bank is also aggressively expanding private banking—launching in Italy and taking a 40% stake in Spain’s Singular Bank. This reflects an ambition articulated a year earlier: “We are very pleased with our autonomous strategy, where we also during Capital Markets Day said that we want to diversify more” — Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) · 2025-05-02.Capital discipline and upgraded outlook
A hallmark of the quarter was the continued optimisation of risk-weighted assets. Wholesale Banking RWAs fell EUR 4.6 billion year-on-year despite loan growth, driven by SRTs, secondary loan sales, and model updates. This capital efficiency, combined with a full reservation of quarterly profit, lifted the CET1 ratio to 13.1%. As a result, management upgraded its ROTE outlook by one percentage point: “we are upgrading our ROTE outlook by 1 percentage point, now expecting an ROTE of more than 15% in 2026 and more than 16% in 2027” — Steven van Rijswijk, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-07-30. The bank’s capital optimization is paying off; earlier efficiency gains were visible in the headcount trend.. This discipline, combined with a booming retail deposit franchise and an upgraded fee outlook, gives ING a strong platform to compound returns heading into 2027.we have seen since 2023, our FTE over balances decreased with 7%, and we believe we can reach our target that we gave in the Capital Markets Day in '24 of a decrease of 10% earlier than we anticipated what we then said in 2027