ING Direct Canada Case summary
ING Direct Canada
The banks of Canada first started in 1980 which were the only banks in the sector. By 1999 foreign banks were given permission to give full service. There were two parts to ING. One was an international ING group in the located in Netherlands that help worldwide from banking to asset management. The other is the ING Direct Bank located in Canada. In 2000, Basil Bell who was senior vice president of operations at ING Direct in Toronto, Canada was concerned with the banks growing client base that it was causing problems like it was impossible to increase staff since he had to have a limit of staff. For example, he believed that the back house had reached the limit in which how many staff members could be working there. So he sent Hadley MacDonald to take care of that situation. So he came up with the solution of using technology to fix the problem for both limiting staff and improving operations. And started off by taking a look at the process of opening new accounts. Because there was no forecasting or benchmark measurements to see how or when they could increase staff. So they decided that improving steps in getting new accounts to decrease workload. The reason about keeping staff to a minimum was because they would have to get paid even more for any overtime they did and that not what the ING bank wanted to do. The second step they took in improving was the mailroom. The mailroom got two new machines that would improve speed of mailroom operations. They also improved systems like in CIFing of new applications. And there were more improvements done. Bell wanted these changes to have long term investments.
The banks of Canada first started in 1980 which were the only banks in the sector. By 1999 foreign banks were given permission to give full service. There were two parts to ING. One was an international ING group in the located in Netherlands that help worldwide from banking to asset management. The other is the ING Direct Bank located in Canada. In 2000, Basil Bell who was senior vice president of operations at ING Direct in Toronto, Canada was concerned with the banks growing client base that it was causing problems like it was impossible to increase staff since he had to have a limit of staff. For example, he believed that the back house had reached the limit in which how many staff members could be working there. So he sent Hadley MacDonald to take care of that situation. So he came up with the solution of using technology to fix the problem for both limiting staff and improving operations. And started off by taking a look at the process of opening new accounts. Because there was no forecasting or benchmark measurements to see how or when they could increase staff. So they decided that improving steps in getting new accounts to decrease workload. The reason about keeping staff to a minimum was because they would have to get paid even more for any overtime they did and that not what the ING bank wanted to do. The second step they took in improving was the mailroom. The mailroom got two new machines that would improve speed of mailroom operations. They also improved systems like in CIFing of new applications. And there were more improvements done. Bell wanted these changes to have long term investments.