ING Bank ramps up BPO business in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines - Netherland-based global financial giant ING Bank is set to double the office space of its shared services hub at the Bonifacio Global City to support the rapid absorption of processing services across its wholesale banking operations in Asia and in Europe.

ING Business Shared Services Inc. is moving to a new and bigger office at the newly built World Plaza of Daiichi Properties on 5th Ave. corner 30th St. on a PEZA-registered IT in Taguig City this month to accommodate more in-house processing from ING.

Cees Ovelgonne, the head of ING’s shared services center, said the office expansion “demonstrates our stronger commitment to the Philippine business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.”

The Dutch financial institution’s shared services business has managed to double its staff count from 250 in 2015 and expects to continue growing to eventually expand its occupancy to eight floors from the current four floors over the next few years.

“ING Bank has been in the Philippines for more than a quarter of a century now. Our decision to expand our presence in this country is a testament to Filipino professionals’ world-class service and significant contribution to ING’s operational excellence,” Ovelgonne said.

ING’s global COO and chief transformation officer Roel Louwhoff said the expansion project is a significant move to further harmonize services and shared technology throughout the bank to ultimately enhance the bank clients’ experiences globally.

“I am very proud of the experience we’ve built in the past years at our Manila shared services center in delivering the highest quality of service and look forward to leveraging our success and expertise across the various ING business lines and across all time zones,” Louwhoff added.

ING started 27 years ago as a representative office in the Philippines, eventually becoming the first foreign bank in the country to be upgraded into a universal bank.

It opened the ING global services operations in 2013 to offer processing services for lending, reconciliation and payments, and static data management services to support some of ING’s wholesale banking branches in the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Japan.

The business eventually started serving the needs of ING globally, specifically for financial markets, trade finance services, and lending services and was renamed ING Business Shared Services in November to align with ING’s other shared services center in Slovakia, and IT centers in Romania, and Poland.

The BPO sector in the Philippins is set to earn close to $40 billion and employ two million workers by 2020.