ING Direct renames itself Tangerine

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A year after being acquired by Bank of Nova Scotia, ING Direct is changing its name.

As of spring 2014 Canada’s first branchless lender will be known as “Tangerine,” though as the moniker suggests, it’s hanging onto the distinctive trademark orange colour it’s had since it was launched 16 years ago by Netherlands-based ING Groep.

ING Direct renames itself Tangerine Back to video

“We have continued to have ING Direct operate on its own and there’s no plan to integrate it [with Scotiabank],” said Peter Aceto, the chief executive.

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Apart from the re-branding, everything else about ING Direct will stay the same. It remains “a separate, stand-alone bank, the same way it’s been [since it was launched],” Mr. Aceto said in an interview.

When the $3.1-billion deal was announced in August 2012, skeptics warned that despite Scotia’s statements to the contrary, the Toronto-based bank would ultimately get rolled into its acquirer, morphing into one more deposit product. They also suggested that loyal ING Direct customers accustomed to the bank’s “Save your money” philosophy would rush for the exits.

But neither prediction seems to have come true. Today the bank has 1.9-million customers, including about 80,000 who became account holders since the start of the year, according to Mr. Aceto, who estimates that only about 2,000 customers left the bank in the weeks after the transaction was announced.

“We see [the departures] as a very small number and we are very excited about the growth trajectory,” he said.

ING Direct started out in 1997 hoping to disrupt Canada’s cozy retail banking sector by doing business online and over the Internet and offering superior savings rates. The business grew well but more recently it has faced rising competition from other online lenders, including PC Financial and ICICI Bank Canada, a subsidiary of India-based ICICI.

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