ING to cut 3,500 jobs, close branches and eliminate Record Bank
One of Belgium’s leading banks, ING, has announced serious job cuts and branch closures over the coming five years
40% of workforce
Last year, ING Belgium made about a €1 billion profit, and the figure so far this year is €588 million. The bank has 709 branches in the country, with about one in three run by an independent manager.
ING also owns Record Bank, with 536 branches run as franchises. The restructuring plan includes merging Record Bank into the ING structure, so those branches will gradually disappear.
According to ING Belgium CEO Rik Vandenberghe (pictured), the current business model is no longer suited to the future of the banking sector. A future bank, he wrote in a letter to employees, “successfully meets the many challenges of the sector and provides answers to the many demands of a better informed and more digitally active clientele”.
Unions described the plan as “a slap in the face,” and called on staff at the headquarters in Brussels to strike. Liberal union ACLVB said forced redundancies would be “unacceptable”.
Christian union LBC said the plan was “scandalous for a company making a profit. Over the last five years, ING has paid out €7 billion to shareholders, Now the staff are paying the price,” spokesperson Herman Vanderhaegen said.
Prime minister Charles Michel has pledged to do anything possible to limit the number of job losses caused by restructuring plans. A majority of the redundancies will happen through both normal and early retirements. The number of forced redundancies is estimated at 1,700.
Michel announced the creation of a task force to work with unions on the number of forced redundancies. “We want to do all we can to bring that figure down,” he said.
Flemish minister-president Geert Bourgeois, meanwhile, hoped for a gesture from ING. “I’m calling on ING to recognise its responsibility and, as a bank that is doing very well here, to do more than it is legally obliged to do,” he said. He hoped that the bank would “show that it cases about its people and that this is not simply a cold-hearted firing procedure”.
Photo: Laurie Dieffembacq/BELGA
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