ING + Finastra: Shaping the future of lending together
Specialists in seven key sectors and 29 subsectors
€130bn in sustainable volume mobilised in 2024
Headquartered in Amsterdam, ING has grown into one of Europe’s largest banks, serving over 38 million customers worldwide across retail banking, wholesale banking, and digital innovation.
Bart Bisschop, Product Lead for Loan Servicing at ING, explained the bank’s need for a scalable platform to support its international corporate customers. He noted that many in-life-related processes used to require significant manual effort. “Those processes sometimes took 30 to 40 minutes,” he said, highlighting the inefficiencies that ING aimed to overcome.
Bidisha Agarwal, IT Lead for Corporate Lending, emphasized the importance of modernization. “We needed it to go to the next level of modernization to really enable us to go to the levels of digitalization that we wanted to go within the bank,” she said.
Loan IQ was identified as a key enabler in this transformation. “Loan IQ is a market leader and continues to be a market leader when it comes to process transactions and handling of complex deals,” said Pranjal Saikia, IT Area Lead for Corporate Lending.
Bart added that the platform plays a crucial role in enhancing customer experience. “Loan IQ provides us the building block on which we can further innovate at ING,” he said.
The bank has made significant progress in its adoption of Loan IQ. “We are almost on 95% of the portfolio being on Loan IQ,” Bidisha shared. “That gives a big leverage when it comes to having one way of consolidating the data, which is very key for the next journey.”
The relationship between ING and Finastra has been instrumental in this journey. Pranjal described it as “a symbiotic relationship,” explaining that ING helps enhance Finastra’s product while Finastra supports ING’s business goals.
Bart acknowledged the realities of working with IT products, noting with a smile, “Of course, you’re working with IT products so there’s always something that can happen, or unexpected!”
Bidisha praised the collaboration with Finastra, especially the dedicated team that provided a single point of contact and fast turnaround times. “The dedicated focus and attention from Finastra really helped get the right traction on the delivery,” she said.
Bart highlighted the impact of Finastra’s Loan IQ Nexus APIs, which have enabled straight-through processing for previously manual transactions. “We’re opening up our platform into the wider ING ecosystem,” he said.
Looking ahead, Pranjal expressed enthusiasm for the future. “We’re really excited about the next phase of our journey with Finastra and Loan IQ.”
Bart concluded by emphasizing the spirit of co-innovation. “Both Finastra and ING really believe in co-innovation; that we’re working together to shape the future of lending.”
Wendy Ravensbergen, Regional Sales Director Lending and ING Account Director at Finastra, echoed this sentiment. “The partnership between ING and Finastra is a true example of collaborative innovation in banking,” she said. “Together, we continuously challenge each other to stay ahead of the curve—leveraging cutting-edge technology to deliver smarter, faster, and more impactful solutions.”
She added, “This dynamic relationship doesn’t just drive progress; it creates real, measurable benefits that grow in value every single day. We can’t wait to see what the next phase of innovation brings as we continue to push boundaries and shape the future of finance together.”
