ING Direct has entered the platform space, leveraging off its strong savings and term deposit brands.
It also unveiled plans to boost accredited planner numbers and increase funds under advice (FUA) four-fold in four years.
The direct savings bank, wholly owned by ING Group, has a multi-channel distribution strategy, including 245 dealer groups representing 2500 planners and about 7500 retail mortgage brokers.
“We have about 2500 registered and accredited financial planners, and about a quarter are ‘active’,” ING Direct executive director delivery Lisa Claes said.
“We are just breaking into the platform space. We have found there is a very significant appetite to have our brand on platforms for a number of reasons,” she added.
“For one, being a strong brand, and secondly our savings products, whether they be in business, self-managed super or savings, retail savings [they’re] simple, intuitive, easy to use, and consistently [at a] very high rate. So it’s not surprising that we’ve been feeling very strong demand, we just can’t build quick enough to meet the demand.”
ING Direct currently has $150 million in its platform and its adviser network has grown in the past 18 months to $1.3 billion funds under advice.
“The task is to get to $5 billion by 2015,” ING Direct adviser distribution manager Rachna Chandna said.
Chandna said ING Direct had a three-pronged strategy: targeting boutique dealer groups, product development and leveraging off its strong brand recognition and savings products.
ING Direct has about $24 billion in retail savings, which it said ranked it fifth in Australia.
Claes said the business was increasingly relying on its robust retail funding levels.
“It’s all going in the right direction, so we can continue our retail mortgage business,” Claes said.
