ING Bank Romania in two months from now is to release a special product intended to manage rich people's money - "ING Wealth Management." The minimum amount of money required is $80,000-$90,000.
"There are rich people in Romania. You couldn't believe how many! We want to provide them with special money management services (private banking)," Ralph Hamers, general manager of the Holland-based ING Group branch in Bucharest, told Ziarul Financiar.
He says the past decade has witnessed a lot of Romanian entrepreneurs that established their own business and then sold them to larger companies. "They (the entrepreneurs) must do something with this money. We'll start by providing assistance to help them place it," Hamers said.
ING Wealth Management will include banking deposits, insurance products, credit cards and shares traded on the Stock Exchange and Rasdaq.
"The Stock Exchange has some opportunities that may bring a lot of money, too. Why not advise people to buy shares?" Hamers said.
There is no other bank to officially provide such a service to rich people on the Romanian market. There are some banks, which provide better terms for natural persons that have high amounts of money to deposit (i.e. higher interests), though. In general, the dealers and banks' treasurers provide money management consultancy for rich clients.
ING is the most powerful foreign bank on the Romanian market and the fourth largest if considering the assets in the balance sheet at the end of last year.
As of yesterday, ING Group brought all its operations together, under a single name, to develop integrated services such as banking, insurance and asset management.
ING Bank will be the name associated with corporate and retail banking, ING Barings will be the name associated with investment banking (brokerage company), ING Nederlanden, formerly known as Nederlanden Asigurari de Viata, will be the new name for insurance services.
ING Employee Benefits is the name for the special banking and insurance service package for the personnel of the companies that have accounts with ING.
"We are doing this rebranding to make sure the market knows what we are. We want people to be able to tell the difference on the market," Hamers mentioned.
The start of ING operations in Romania goes back to 1994. The banking services focused more on companies and less on natural persons. As of this month, ING will start providing services for natural persons (retail), on condition they have at least $5,000 to deposit.
