ING get support from Dutch Govt.

In message , DerekF wrote

I could tell they were in serious trouble when I got the letter on Friday just telling me how well they were doing.

It's was the same type lies that the head of Icesave told just before that organisation collapsed.

The ING home page has a friendly message saying that all of their customers have their savings guaranteed up to 100,000 Euro.

There's also a link, under the picture of the happy toddler, to a message by the CEO.

In the light of this, should one reduce one's savings with ING:

...at all?

...below 100,000 Euro?

...below £50,000?

...to zero?

It all depends on your attitude to risk.

And on your attitude to return. You get no more than 6% with ING over

It all depends on your attitude to risk.

And on your attitude to return. You get no more than 6% with ING over

All our savings are in my wife's name. As a non-taxpayer she gets the interest gross so its marginally advantageous for us to keep our money in a high interest savings account!

Ret.

We had two cheerful letters from them last week. We just opened our accounts with them in August and have already taken most of it back even although we had amounts well under the safe limits. Derek.

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ING is the biggest bank in the Netherlands and the government can hardly let it fail unless there's a systemic meltdown. Living in the Netherlands, there doesn't seem to be an atmosphere of impending doom -- yet.

On the other hand, the Dutch government has IMHO enthusiastic pledged itself, albeit unashamedly opportunistically, to highly deregulated financial markets for quit a few years now. So it should probably not come as a surprise it there is quite a bid more awry then is publicly admitted right now. Having just filed for a compensation from Landsbankinn, I'd say below E. 100.000. :-)

I see some BS's are offering 7%-ish fixed for 9-12 month term, which sounds good if the bank rate is falling. But again, less tax.

Anything better than index-linked savings certs to move one's ING deposit into at present?

Lucky you!

In message , DvdP wrote

Can they afford to bail out the 85 million customers?

If it is a UK registered bank, the government can use their Northern Rock powers to nationalise the bank and move the deposit accounts elsewhere, as they did with Bradford & Bingley, Kaupthing and Heritable. ING isn't UK registered, so that isn't an option, so you will have to wait for the FSCS to pay up, as is happening with Icesave. I guess that's OK for fixed rate bonds where you are expecting the money to be tied up for a while anyway, but not for instant access accounts where you expect to be able to get the money quickly in case of emergency, or to use it for Christmas shopping.

And you have moved your money... where?

That seems the somewhat disquieting question. So far, I couldn't find a clear answer. Its very nice to increase the guarantee on deposit from 20.000 to 100.000 to 'restore confidence', but if there's a reasonable suspicion that (more-or-less) politically appointed directors behaved like drunken sailors when times were good, than coming up with clear answers would be very nice too...