History of ING Direct.

If it's any comfort I put more-or-less my entire house-sale proceeds into ING direct last June and I have to confess I did this with a shudder albeit mitigated by the better return. They're regulated by the FSA but if they went belly up that's good for only (approx) £30k - no better or worse than any other UK bank. The parent ING - and I hope it's the same ING and not just a sound-alike - are apparently a massive european bank which bought Barings post the Nick Leeson adventure-debacle. I think Northern Rock are offering 4.15% which is perhaps a little better than ING at the moment though the branchless, faceless ING operation will probably enable it to pip most of the competition if and when rates start to rise.

Please let me know if you hear of anything that might promote involuntary soiling of underwear.

ING: one of the biggest Dutch banks around also, massive in the futures markets (which isnt neccessarily a good thing!!!! ;-)

ING direct last

the competition

Ouch! How bad is that actually? Futures is hopefully only one egg in a big basket. Is a saver any more exposed to risk here than with, say, a UK high-street bank/BS do you think?

big basket. Is

They are a very large Dutch bank who bought Barings for £1 when Nick Leason brought it to its knees.

Probably yes, I doubt the UK government would mount a rescue of an internet subsidiary of a dutch bank if it went under, whereas they probably would for, say, Barclays, and the dutch government probably also would not be that concerned about UK customers. Even so the risk is pretty small, so it depends how paranoid you feel.

huge dutch banking group...

js

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