ING Revamps European Management Structure Ahead of Spinoff
March 14, 2013 by Best's News Service
AMSTERDAM – ING Group NV announced changes in the governance of its European insurance and investment management operations ahead of a planned move to split those operations off as a stand-alone operation.
“These governance changes follow the measures announced in November 2012 in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness through sharpening the strategic focus, improving processes and systems and reducing the number of management layers of support staff in the Netherlands,” the group said.
The current regional headquarters for Insurance Benelux and Insurance Central & Rest of Europe (CRE) will be combined into one head office for the European Insurance and Investment Management businesses with support staff for all business units, ING said. There will be separate reporting lines for the Dutch Nationale-Nederlanden business units ad for the international insurance businesses and ING Investment Management International.
The chief executives of Nationale-Nederlanden Life, Nationale-Nederlanden Non Life and Nationale-Nederlanden Bank will report directly to Lard Friese as the member of the Management Board for Insurance EurAsia who is responsible for the Insurance businesses in Europe.
David Knibbe, currently chief executive officer of CRE, will assume responsibility for Insurance International and will add Insurance Luxembourg and Insurance Belgium to his responsibilities. Knibbe will continue to report to Friese. ING said Tom Kliphuis, currently CEO of Insurance Benelux and CEO of Nationale-Nederlanden, has decided to step down as of April 1, 2013.
“The transformation program at Insurance Europe is key in preparing our European Insurance and Investment Management organization for its stand-alone future,” said Group CEO Jan Hommen in a statement. “The objective is to build an agile organization, able to drive change and performance at the same time. I am convinced that the reduction of the number of management layers will help the organization become more efficient and effective.”
As part of an ongoing divestment strategy, ING has been preparing its U.S. operations and Europe operations to become separate, stand-alone entities. The group has also been selling its Asian assets in stages.
Most recently, Hong Kong private investment firm Pacific Century Group closed on the US$2.14 billion cash acquisition of ING’s insurance units in Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand (Best’s News Service, March 1, 2013). The sale, including the life insurance, general insurance, pension and financial planning units of ING in those markets, will contribute a net gain of about 950 million euros (US$1.2 billion) to the first-quarter results of ING.
Two U.S. units of ING Group, ING Life Insurance and Annuity Co. and ING USA Annuity and Life Insurance Co., currently have Best’s Financial Strength Ratings of A (Excellent).
(By David Pilla, international editor, BestWeek: David.Pilla@ambest.com) BN-NJ-03-13-2013 1409 ET #
