Orange Sale: No-branch ING bank, $90B assets on the block

ING Direct Bank, the Wilmington-based, $90 billion-asset U.S. phone-and-online banking arm of troubled Dutch-Belgian giant ING Group, will be sold by 2013 as part of a deal with the Dutch government, chief executive Arkadi Kuhlmann told 1,200 workers in Wilmington and another 1,000 in Minnesota and other sites in a "town meeting" today.

It's part of a restructuring plan the bank has arranged with European regulators to sell off assets and raise cash in exchange for public financial support. ING also owns insurance and investment operations in Frazer, Wilmington and Radnor, among other places.

ING Direct (formally ING Bank f.s.b.) was set up a decade ago to raise cheap funding for the bank in the rich U.S. consumer deposit market. It has been the most successful of the dot.com-era "branchless" banks, despite losing money in the last few quarters as loan loss rates rose. It does business by phone, mail, email, and a handful of "Orange"-theme coffeehouses, including one near Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square.

Despite the sale announcement, "it's business as usual," ING spokeswoman Cathy MacFarlane told me. The bank has about $75 billion in consumer deposits and $45 billion in loans on the books; it's been adding about half a billion dollars in deposits and another half billion in loans every month over the past year, with products like the five-year "Easy Orange" mortgage currently priced at 4% (but you can only borrow 75% of the appraised value.)