The Hindu Business Line : India on ING radar

For Dutch financial services major, the ING Group, all eyes are on India. Though India still contributes a small portion of the group's total turnover, plans are afoot to make the Indian operations play a larger role in the global scheme, said Mr Michel Tilmant, Chairman of the ING Group.

Mr Tilmant is in India this week along with the Supervisory and Executive Board of the company to get a hands-on feel of opportunities and challenges in the local market.

After Bangalore and Mumbai, the high-level ING team will be going to Delhi for meetings scheduled with top Government officials, an executive with ING in India told Business Line. Subsequently, there will be a wrap-up meeting at Udaipur, he said. Explaining the significance of having the company's Executive and Supervisory Board touring and meeting in the country, the official said that the board meets few times a year. Having a meeting in India is important because the market is of strategic interest, he said.

Mr Tilmant said that while it was clear that the company believed in India, it was also true that as a group necessary resources had not been put to develop (the operations) as much as it should have.

`Funds never an issue'

Pointing out that funds were never an issue, he said that the priority was to pull together the financial strengths of the company and make a meaningful use of the platform available. The company's operations in India are across banking, asset management and insurance. The growth strategy in retail-banking was through having good info-tech platforms and infrastructure, byconsolidating and solidifying strategy in solutions network, he said.

Responding to a query on mutual funds, he said that the group was interested in acquisitions, but the bottom-line was to keep the financial discipline.

On outsourcing to India, he said, that it was important to have a competitive cost structure to stay competitive. Processes in the company were being reviewed and it could be outsourced if it improved prices, he said. However, he added, the company also had a social responsibility to people who worked with it. There are three outsourcing contracts in Europe in the info-tech, IT infrastructure etc. He said that India too was being looked at, but against that backdrop.

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