Financial education

Financial education
Helping customers manage their financial future and making finance easier to understand have been fundamental parts of ING’s mission for many years. Many ING businesses have successfully launched initiatives to allow consumers to educate themselves on a variety of more complex financial topics. This in response to consumers struggling to find relevant, easy to understand and trustworthy financial information and advice.

Empowering our customers
Within ING we strive to enhance the financial capability of consumers and especially of our customers. A first step is providing clear and transparent information so that our customers understand our product and services. In addition we have developed a number of practical tools that help our customers to get more insight into their personal financial situation and that simplify financial decision-making.

Examples:

  • ‘We the Savers’ – ING Direct USA
    popular blog that talks about becoming smarter savers in a social way.
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  • Invite customers to ING offices after hours to explain how they could respond to the financial crisis – ING the Netherlands.

    Read more about empowering our customers

Different life phases
Our starting point is that education can only be effective if it is relevant to people’s needs. That is why we link our initiatives to the different phases of customers’ lives, from buying a house to managing a pension.

We are convinced that financial education should start as early as possible in customers’ lives. Therefore many of our initiatives have a special focus on youth education, starting with young customers and their parents. 

Examples:

  • Planet Orange - orangekids.com - USA/Canada
    To help children of all ages learn about earning, spending, saving and investing responsibly, ING DIRECT USA created a comprehensive financial education outreach program – Planet Orange. The Planet Orange Program includes ING DIRECT’s space-themed financial education kid’s website, two Planet Orange Activity Books available for use at home or in the classroom and fully-trained ING DIRECT Associates who volunteer to teach lessons from Planet Orange to students in the local community. During 2010, more than 2,500 students nationwide were taught Planet Orange financial education lessons. In addition, over 200 hours of volunteer service were dedicated towards improving youth’s knowledge of basic money management by ING DIRECT Associates. ING DIRECT Canada started with the Planet Orange initiative in 2010.
     
  • Kidzzbank - kidzzbank.com - India
    ING Vysya Bank in India launched a portal designed to help children understand the concept of money and savings in a fun way. The portal has sections that talks about the story of money, a primer on how to save money and a section on keeping the world green. Kidzzworld also has a fun zone with games and quizzes which allow kids to win and earn points that children can save and use to send E-Greetings to their parents for example. The portal is developed for children in the age groups 5 to 15 years.
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  • Bizznizz - bizznizz.ing.nl (in Dutch only) - the Netherlands
    ING in the Netherlands offers account holders aged 12 years and up Bizznizz. A programme that teaches teenagers how to manage their money and how to earn extra money by setting up their own business. Youth account holders receive a special suitcase with useful tips and tools that enable them to create their own business cards, flyers and logos. On the Bizznizz site they can upload videos of their businesses and keep track of their income and expenses. 
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  • Numa’s World - the Netherlands
    For its young account holders aged 6-11 ING Netherlands developed a financial education programme called Numa’s World. This website hosts many games and educational programmes that teach children who have an ING children’s account in a fun way how to handle money. Through interactive games children can learn how to tell, save and exchange money. The games and the educational material were developed together with parents and educational institutes based on the learning goals defined by the National Institute For Budget Information (Nibud).
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  • Youth & Money Guide – Website (in Dutch only) - the Netherlands
    ING Netherlands introduced the “Youth & Money Guide”, an online tool to support parents in the financial education of their children. By completing a few online questions parents get immediate insight in how their situation compares to the national average. For example, they are provided with the average amount of pocket-money or clothing allowance for a certain age. The information in the tool is based on independent research executed by the National Institute For Budget Information (Nibud) and the Dutch Platform For Financial Literacy (CentiQ). The tool is available for all consumers and not only for ING customers. 
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Community Investment

We want to empower individuals to achieve financial independence and become self-sufficient individuals. We focus on financial education and supporting entrepreneurs in starting and growing their business. It is a natural way for us to support communities by sharing our knowledge and skills and align our community investments with the core business. Read more