Ladies and gentlemen. Of course, this welcome extends to all shareholders present in the room and those listening in. I would also like to welcome the members of the Central Workers' Council who are also present. As in previous years, this meeting will be conducted in English. However, if you prefer, feel free to ask your questions in Dutch. Generally, we will answer your questions in English, but if you prefer to listen to the proceedings in Dutch, a simultaneous translation service is available throughout the meeting. For this, you will have been handed a headphone when you came into the room. During today's meeting, the Executive Board, represented here by three of my colleagues and several members of the Supervisory Board are present. Visible on this podium, Margarete Haase, Chairwoman of the Audit Committee to our far right.
Not as a political belief, I mean just where she is sitting. And then, Herna Verhagen the chairman of the nomination committee. She's the lady with the blonde hair, the first with curls. The straight hair, that is different. I'll come... Then, the one and only Michael Rees. He's at the far end of that end, the far left. Again, not politically affiliated. And of course, myself here in the middle. Then we come to the executive board. And this year we've, I'm not quite sure why, but we've changed the left to right. So on my left is Steven van Rijswijk, also known as the boss. Not as the Bruce Springsteen, but the man who runs the company. And then there's Thanet Putrakul, our beloved CFO, who will retire at the end of this session, and we will certainly miss him, but we'll come to that more later.
The lady with the straight blonde hair to my left, Ljiljana Čortan. She's there nodding her head. The one and only Vroukje van Oosten Slingeland, our General Counsel and the Company Secretary who always keeps me in a firm line. That's sort of everybody around the panel here. There are a couple of other people that I'd like to point out, also present, but not on the podium. Of course, our external auditors for 2025, representing KPMG. Mr. Peti de Wit, he's raised his hand, and right next to him is Niels Paping, raised his hands. The independent, I don't know why independent, but they are by definition independent, Civil Law Notary, Joyce Leemrijse, in the front row again.
The one and only Ida Lerner, who will be appointed subject to your approval, so pay attention, as our new CFO and new member of the Executive Board. Welcome, Ida. Before we continue, I'd like to make a few general remarks for our shareholders present in the room. Please ensure that your mobile phones and other devices are set on a silent mode. To ensure the privacy of all shareholders, it's not allowed to take photos, make videos, or audio recordings during the meeting, or publish and post any footage of the meeting, for instance, on social media. At certain points during the meeting, we will specifically open the floor for questions. You're familiar with it if you've been here earlier. You may speak and ask questions if given the floor. We kindly ask you, as in every other year, not to ask repetitive questions.
I suspect you will, but please refrain if you can, and keep your questions brief and to the point. Questions should relate to the agenda items being discussed, and should you have questions or comments about, for example, your customer relationship, because we have had that in the past with ING or concerning ING products or services. These questions will not be addressed during this meeting. This is a shareholders' meeting. I would strongly recommend that you direct that to the customer service center. I will bundle the questions per item so that they can be answered coherently and answered together. Repetitive questions will not be answered. Interruptions and disturbances will not be tolerated. I plead with you again, please allow this to proceed. Make your point, but disruptions does not add to the debate, and nor does it allow for the functioning of a proper meeting.
We urge you to respect the meeting order in that context, and only this way we can provide you, the shareholders, the opportunity to have a meaningful and a constructive dialogue with the Board of, or the Boards of ING. If the meeting is disturbed, I'll suspend the meeting. I hope that I don't have to do that, and the Board members may leave the stage until the meeting can be continued in an orderly fashion. Let's all hope that we don't need to do that. Next, I'd like to point out the meeting was convened or is convened in accordance with the required formalities. The agenda with the explanatory note were published on ING's corporate website on 27th of February 2026 and were available for review at ING's head office in Amsterdam. There were no proposals submitted by shareholders for discussion at this meeting.
The records of the notary of last year's annual general meeting has been available on the ING's website since third November 2025. A notarial record will be prepared for the purpose of adopting the minutes of this meeting as usual, and the meeting is being broadcast live via video webcast and recorded. I'm now pleased to give the floor to Ms. Van Oosten Slingeland for an explanation on some of the logistics around the meeting. Go ahead, please.
Yes, thank you, Chairman. I will indeed explain how the voting works, how to ask questions, and what options are available if you would like to make use of translation services. In relation to the voting, many shareholders have taken the opportunity to cast their votes prior to this meeting, either by granting a proxy or by using the e-voting system. A statement of the represented capital and the percentage of votes represented by the notary will be displayed on screen prior to voting being opened, which will be at agenda item 2D. Shareholders following the AGM remotely cannot vote live during this meeting. New in this AGM is that voting takes place on your own device and that you can vote on all items all throughout the meeting. You have received your personal QR code at the registration desk, which allows you to log in on the voting website.
In case you experience any difficulties, please notify our staff for assistance. As of agenda item 2D, the polls for all voting items will be open, and they will be closed after the last voting item on the agenda has been discussed, which is item 10 today. This approach differs from last year, as you will recall, when voting was conducted at specific points during the meeting. Voting results of all voting items will be disclosed at the last agenda item, which is item 11. To ask questions online, you must have registered yourself as attending online at the e-Vote platform. Once you're logged on to that platform, you'll see the chat function at the top of your screen. You can post questions in the chat, which, by the way, will not be answered via the chat. They will be answered in this meeting.
As indicated by the Chairman, questions will be grouped per topic, so when the relevant agenda item is raised, questions received via the chat for that item will be answered with that item together with other questions. On translation, for those of you making use of the translation services, please note that there are two channels. Channel one provides a Dutch translation, and Channel two provides an English translation. Chairman, handing it back to you.
Thank you, Madam Legal Counsel. Good afternoon, everyone. First and foremost, I'd like to thank you for your continued support during the course of 2025. As we gather for this Annual General Meeting, we do so at a critical moment in world history, where we have not one conflict, but two conflicts, and the impact of perhaps two other shocks in the form of AI and perhaps in the form of what we often call the China 2.0 shock. Whatever that means as a consequence, I think we have to be prepared for it. These are sort of 2026 events. Some of them were present in 2025. It is, I think, with some degree of satisfaction and pride that we say that we've been very resilient in dealing with these challenges. What that essentially means that across a number of wide-ranging metrics, we have performed well.
I'm very grateful, and we are very grateful for the support that we have received from you throughout the year, and particularly shareholders, clients, and our own employees. I think it's important to recognize that none of this would have been possible without the employees for their hard work and dedication. I'd like to especially thank them for it. It's cliché to say so, but I think that's the real truth of the matter. Because if you do not have happy and good employees, it doesn't quite work. I'm very grateful. Thank you. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank a few colleagues who have made a great difference during their career and their time in this house. When I say the house, I correct myself and say ING. Our CFO, Tanate Phutrakul, and our former Head of Wholesale Banking, Andrew Bester.
Both have made the transformation that we've gone through over the last several years a reality, and we are grateful for all the work and the dedication and commitment over these years, which has allowed us to be where we are today, a well-run financial institution. I'd also like to take a moment to thank my colleague, Herna Verhagen. For whatever reason, she's decided another institution which she will join, and so therefore, these are the rules that apply. This is her last day as a member of the Supervisory Board. We will absolutely miss her. Her wise counsel, her commitment, and hard work over the years, and rarely getting flustered even under pressure, that's been particularly valuable to me and to my colleagues. Thank you.
At the same time, I'd like to warmly welcome Ida Lerner, whose appointment as a member of the Executive Board as CFO is on the agenda and will come today. Ida, welcome. In case you're wondering who she is, it's the very tall lady sitting on the front row. Allow me to reflect briefly on the broader environment, which I alluded to earlier, in which we are operating. It is clear that the world has fundamentally changed. The important thing is to accept these developments in our considerations and understand the implications that they have for societies we operate in, and what that actually means for our clients and their businesses, as ING is, of course, a Netherlands-based house and European bank with global operations. In reality, we are a global franchise with a universal banking model.
Our base as our home is Europe. Europe matters a great deal to us. If you ask the question of what is it at this point in time that we need most in Europe to cater to the social contract that we have across Europe, within the European Union, it is growth. We need growth in Europe. Without growth, it's very difficult to fund and meet the obligations that we have to our fellow citizens. That means that we all have to play our part and role in that context. The question often asked is that it's easy to talk about growth, but what does that mean? How do you translate that into a sustainable growth? In many ways, you could say that the blueprint for how to go about it is already there in the Letta and the Draghi reports.
From that perspective, we have the blueprint and the framework, but as in most things, you need that, but it's not enough. It's how do you then execute that, and how do you then translate it into what really matters? I think you can talk about that for us, but for ourselves as in-house at ING, we believe that we will focus on a couple of different things to make it tangible and sensible in the context of our own operations and what we do. The first thing that springs to mind with two wars going on and our security under threat, that Europe must strengthen its defense and resilience because the stability that we need for economic growth depends on keeping it stable, and strong defense is crucial to that.
We will, and we have played a part in that, and we will continue to do that through our financing activities. This is not about the sort of the Rheinmetall of the world, of course, or Thales or Finmeccanica, but this is about the much smaller operations across Europe that are developing, and we need to sustain and support them in that. This is a matter of public-private partnership, and we will continue to engage in that. The second thing I would like to say is that it's not fewer regulations, but we need simpler regulations. We have, one way or another, unwittingly created a whole web of regulations that still block competitiveness and growth.
I think the good news is that the European Union has recognized that, and the Omnibus project is very much a part of that process of translating that into not fewer, but simpler rules that allow us. Surprise to anyone that the per-unit cost of energy in Europe is multiple higher of that of America and maybe other parts of the world. Now, that has a massive drag on all companies operating in Europe, and that is a serious impediment to growth. Instead of fighting each other, let's work together in what is the right mix and how do we get there to sustain and finance this element of the energy transition that we are making. Let's not make the mistake of assuming that this is secondary. This is central to the whole point of growth.
The last point I would like to make is on technology. I think we are on the cusp of something that we see it is happening, and it will happen of a magnitude that perhaps even is difficult for most of us to get our heads around it. It's not about digitization. That's the simplest aspect of it. It is the application of artificial intelligence. I think, and we believe this, it is so transformational, the impact is so big, that we need to understand what is the relationship we're going to have with artificial intelligence. Are we going to use it to improve our human productivity? In other words, that's the traditional way we have thought about technology. Are we going to serve this technology?
Because then it's completely a different relationship, and if we're not careful, that's exactly where it will lead us to. I fear that unwittingly we may go there if we do not consciously deal with this. Let's embrace it as an opportunity, but let's also be clear that we need to define this relationship legally, socially, and in every other sense so that we can profit from it and use it the way we want to use it, as opposed to it being a destructive force. To conclude, these are sobering thoughts and developments. I also see plenty of opportunity for us to accelerate our growth, which is important from a shareholder perspective, to continue to diversify our income streams, which we have done, and support our clients in their transitions to a low carbon footprint economy.
We can also continue to look for opportunities, and we have done so and we will continue to do so, that strengthen our position in our existing markets. The focus of this is really scaling up growth and to broaden our capabilities. This is consistent with the strategy we presented a couple of years ago in 2024 during our Capital Markets Day. This is no surprises here, but is doing what we have said we will do and continue to do that. Let me end by thanking you for your continued support. Now, a couple of points before I hand it over. Let's move at this stage to the second item on our agenda, and that is agenda items 2A, the report of the Executive Board. 2B, the Supervisory Board report. 2C, the application of the revised Dutch Corporate Governance Code. 2D, the remuneration report.
All of this will be discussed together. First, the gentleman on my left, I usually refer to him as Bruce Springsteen, the boss, also known as Steven van Rijswijk. He'll take you through the performance, the growth opportunities, and strategy in more detail. Steven? Oh, there's a few more things before you go there. Sorry. The Chairwoman of the Remuneration Committee, that is Herna, has prepared an introduction, agenda item 2D, which is the advisory role on the remuneration report as included in 2025. Then we will take questions, agenda items 2A through 2D. Following that question round, we'll open it for voting items, including advisory votes on the remuneration report. After this, we'll move to 2E, the financial statement and the work carried out by KPMG in relation to 2025 financial year.
Peti de Wit of KPMG has prepared, as in every other year, a presentation and questions on this can be asked to him after his explanation. I now give the floor to Steven.
Good. Thank you, Carl. Good afternoon. Thank you for your continued support for ING. Thank you also for being here today. I will take you shortly through the financial results of ING of 2025, as well as how we are executing on our strategy and how we are positioning moving forward. At ING, our purpose is quite simple. We help people to stay a step ahead in life and also in their business. What does that mean for us? It means that we want to provide banking making that easy and seamless, removing obstacles, and also making sure that people are able to get with confidence to make their decisions and move forward.
In that sense, we are continuing our strategy in 2025, and it meant in 2025 that we're doing more business with more customers and at the same time stay close to our clients, especially also to our business and Wholesale Banking clients because there's many sector changes that Carl just alluded to, but also how do they navigate the uncertainty. As a bank, because we are a bank, we also play a role in directing capital, and we do that where we can support that growth. We do that with mortgages. We are one of the biggest mortgage providers in Europe. We support entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises in a number of the nine retail markets in which we're present. On a global basis, we help and serve our corporate, our multinational clients, and also our financial institutional clients all around the world with financing.
In that environment, we have a strategy, and that strategy continues to provide with us a framework, how we support the customers, how we allocate capital, and also how we create long-term value. There are a few areas in that regard. We, of course, have the overarching areas of providing superior value to our customers and putting sustainability into the heart of what we do. When we look at 2025, we have three priorities. The first one is to accelerate growth. That accelerated growth comes into growing the customer base, but also broadening the customer base. What does that mean? It means that we need to become more relevant for the areas and the businesses that we have in certain markets.
We want to be more relevant in certain markets, and it means that we need to add certain market segments in markets that we were working in before but did not have all market segments. For example, in Germany, we have approximately 10 million private individual customers, but we were very small or had almost no business banking, so no business for SMEs and entrepreneurs, and also no wealth management and private banking. We look at that in more markets as well. That means that we need to be more relevant in the markets in which we operate. The second element of the execution of our strategy focuses on impact by being there for customers and clients at moments that matter, important moments for them.
For example, when they buy a house or when they make an investment or when they want to go through the sustainability transition, that means that we need to provide more specific products and services to the subsegments of the economy, not a one-size-fits-all. In private individuals, for example, you have Gen Z, or you have affluent or mass affluent or expats. We need to become more specific in the type of services that we provide in any given environment to be more impactful for these customers at moments that matter for them. Thirdly, it is then delivering the value by the how. How do we make sure we deliver this in a way that is easy, instant, personal, and relevant?
Because banking is commoditized, and if we can deliver the value or deliver the service in an easy, instant, personal, and relevant way, it means that we can differentiate ourselves towards others. Therefore, we also create long-term value for all the stakeholders, including the shareholders. Now, how we then translate the superior value for customers is different for different market segments. Like I said, it is not one size fits all. Even in retail, when I come here to the next page, it is different when we look at different market segments. If you look at private individuals, so personal banking, we are really focused on delivering that superior value through digital leadership. That also means that we have a digital-first or mobile-first approach, that we provide scalable platforms.
We work through our digital systems to make sure we interact with the customers, and we provide, like you just discussed, more broad and more specific product propositions. When, and again, on Retail, you talk about Business Banking, and that includes SMEs, entrepreneurs, mid-corporates, then we need to make sure that we have more integrated banking solutions, local expertise, so being on the ground and having face-to-face contacts with a number of these entrepreneurs, and also having a broader digital offering so that we help them and tailor them through different stages of business growth. Again, it's not a one-size-fits-all. When we talk about Private Banking and Wealth Management, first of all, we were relatively small compared to a number of our competitors. We are growing that business by building our investment platform into all of the nine Retail markets in which we work.
We broaden and deepen the expertise in those platforms, but we also need to have a better trusted advice and tailored solutions because we are moving up the value chain by helping people in their investment strategies and also for their older age or for their pensions to make investments. Also, for example, in collaboration with Business Banking, because there will be many entrepreneurs that at some point in time stop their business or sell their business, and then they can invest that money into an investment proposition, specific tailored proposition to increase the relevance and the impact, like I discussed on the previous page, to different subsegments in Retail. The same goes for Wholesale Banking. That's the part of the business where we focus on large companies, large multinationals, financial institutions. Now we support them with international trade and cross-border financing.
We also make sure that we invest in a number of the product foundations. We have a very big lending franchise, but we also need to help them with risk management, and we do it in financial markets. We invest in global financial markets capabilities. We invest in global transaction services capabilities, such as payments, and we help them to finance them with the transitions, including the transition to a low-carbon economy. Now, underneath all of that, underneath all these strategies for different client segments, there is a key enabler in the group, and that is the investment that we make in our operations and in technology and making them more scalable. That means that we're building scalable platforms, so scalability in our operations with the hubs, for example, scalability in the technology by using the same cloud environment, for example, in technology.
Also using data, AI, and analytics more effectively, and like Karl said, responsibly by simplifying thereby our processes and thereby making sure we can improve the customer experience and thereby we support value to the customers and also provide growth. The second element of our strategy is sustainability. That remains at the heart of the strategy and is also integral of how we do business and support our customers over the long term. Our climate action focuses on three areas where we believe we can make the biggest impact. We can make the greatest impacts on what need to happen in that transition. First element of that impact is that we drive down emissions in line with the global goal of moving to net zero by 2050. That is the Paris Agreement, and we guide ourselves there by the Terra approach.
The second one is that we help also to build financing because that is needed for new technologies and new sustainable systems that we need for the future. For example, we talk about wind or solar or hydrogen or hydropower or batteries, different and sometimes new technologies that need to have a place in the system to replace fossil fuels. Thirdly, we want to have everybody to play their part in the transition, not only companies, but also people, and therefore individual people in personal banking. Therefore, we want to help them to make more sustainable choices, for example, with renovation loans when they want to make their houses more sustainable.
By supporting our clients and customers in these three areas, we believe that we can make the most meaningful contribution to the transition while also building a sustainable business for the future for our customers. In 2025, we realized a fully mobilized amount of financing of EUR 166 billion, coming from EUR 130 billion in 2024. Also we increased the finance for renewable power, wind and solar, like I just said, for example, to EUR 9.6 billion, coming from EUR 7 billion in 2024. Step by step, that is increasing. We move to the financial performance that is underpinned also by the commercial performance. This is all about execution of our strategy, focusing on the customer, be relevant for them, be disciplined about growth, and also be disciplined about diversification.
We're proud of the fact that we were able to grow the number of retail customers to 41 million, and in that, the number of primary customers with over one million, and primary customers are customers who consider ING their main bank or one of their main banks. With that, we also grew our lending, our deposits. You see here on the slide depicted, we grew our lending volume with approximately EUR 57 billion, and we grew our deposits with approximately EUR 38 billion. Therefore, we grew the balance sheet with approximately 6%-7%. Now, our revenues were around EUR 23 billion. The interest income on that stayed approximately broadly the same as in 2024, but we grew our fee income with 15%. That comes back to that diversification I was talking about, to EUR 4.6 billion.
In that, investments, as I mentioned with Private Banking and Wealth Management, our assets under management and e-brokerage grew to EUR 278 billion, so that is with 16%. That's just an example of how we're diversifying our income streams to be dependent on interest income. Now in aggregate, that gave us a net profit of EUR 6.3 billion with a return on equity of 13.2%. We continue to invest. We continue to invest in all the pillars of growth. We continue to invest in diversification. We continue to invest in sustainability. We do that while we're also disciplined on costs. In that, and like I already said, I want to wholeheartedly thank my colleagues. My close to 70,000 colleagues have been working again very hard in 2027 to get to this result.
We go to the shareholders because in the end, that commercial performance and in the end, the financial performance also gets us to deliver attractive returns for our shareholders. We had an interim dividend that was paid per share in August of EUR 0.35 per share. We have a proposal that's today on the table of EUR 0.736 per share as the closing dividend, bring the total dividend to EUR 1.086 per share for 2025. In addition, we also made additional distributions, including EUR 3.6 billion in share buybacks and additional EUR 500 million in a cash distribution throughout the year, which then brings that total on EUR 4.1 billion. We remain committed to a disciplined capital management operating at the right level of capital for all of our stakeholders. Not too high, but also not too low. There needs to be a balance there as well.
If I then look at 2026, we will remain very much focused on focusing on delivering value for our customers, executing on our strategy, focusing on the growth and support of the economies that we operate in, and therefore, we're confident that we can also deliver going forward value for the shareholders, including all the stakeholders. With that, thank you again very much for attention. Thanks for your continued support. With that, Carl, back to you.
Thank you, Steven. The next agenda item is actually ING's application of the revised Dutch Corporate Governance Code, which came out in 2025. The Dutch Corporate Governance Code was revised with, as the main change, is actually the incorporation of the new wording around the statement of risk management. ING has included a statement on the effectiveness of this risk management regarding operational and compliance risks, also referred to as the VOR or the Verklaring omtrent risicobeheersing. It is, for a financial institution, not unique. This is certainly new to the Netherlands for all listed corporate entities. We do that. A statement on the reliability of sustainability reporting is also included in that. Both can be found in ING's 2025 Executive Board Statement.
For more information on ING's compliance with the Dutch Corporate Governance Code, I refer to the Corporate Governance paragraph as included in the Annual Report and the booklet on this topic that was published on ING's corporate website on 26th of February 2026. I'd like to now move to the next agenda item, which is Item 2D. For this, I'm pleased to hand it over to Ms. Herna Verhagen, Chairwoman of the Remuneration Committee, for whom it is the last time that she will address this meeting in her current capacity. Herna.
Thank you, Carl, and good afternoon, everyone. I would like to briefly introduce the Remuneration Report over the year 2025, including the remuneration of the Executive Committee for the year 2026. As explained earlier by Carl as well as Steven, 2025 was a successful year for ING. The bank continued to execute its strategy, served more customers, and did deliver very strong financial results. Against this backdrop, the Supervisory Board concluded that the overall performance of the Executive Board in 2025 was strong.
Based on a thorough and balanced assessment of ING's results, each Executive Board member's performance against their objectives, their behavior, and risk and compliance matters, the Supervisory Board has decided to award the following variable remuneration, 18% of the maximum of 20% of base salary to the CEO, 18% of the maximum of 20% to the CFO, and again, 18% of the maximum of 20% to the CRO. For 2026, the Supervisory Board has proposed an amended remuneration policy for the Executive Board, which is on the agenda of this meeting later today. In line with the proposed policy, the Supervisory Board has decided to increase the base salary of the CEO by 5% in 2026 and the base salary of the CRO and CFO by 7% in 2026.
The proposed increase for the CEO is broadly in line with the Dutch CLA and the average base salary increases for the wider workforce of ING. These adjustments represent a step in reducing the gap with the market median while still remaining well below the median levels, continuing to follow our policy aim of positioning total direct remuneration just below the median over time. If the proposals for this remuneration policy are adopted in this meeting, 50% of the increase will be paid in shares subject to a five-year holding period, further strengthening alignment with the long-term interests of our shareholders. For the variable remuneration over 2026, performance measures with appropriately stretching targets have been selected, covering a range of financial and non-financial and risk objectives that support ING's key strategic priorities.
I would like to thank the members of the Executive Board for their leadership and performance in 2025. I would like to thank all ING employees for their continued dedication to ING, our customers, and all our stakeholders. Back to you, Carl.
Thank you, Herna. We'll now address the questions regarding agenda items 2A, 2 B, 2C, and 2D. I would like to structure questions in three themed rounds. The first round is about strategy, including sustainability, corporate governance, and financial performance. The second round is about other topics on the agenda items 2A-2 C not scheduled to be dealt with later under the agenda. The third round is about agenda item 2D, the remuneration report for 2025. Those are the first, in fact, the first round, second round, and third round. As a reminder, I'd like to ask you to keep your questions brief and concise and to ensure that they relate directly to the agenda items in question. If not, I'll start with two.
Thank you, Mr. Guha, for the introduction, and also Mr. Van Rijswijk and Ms. Verhagen. On the last point, remuneration, I can be very brief. It will come up shortly, but congratulations on the moderate remuneration policy. It is still a good remuneration. I have no further questions about that. [Foreign language]
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Before you go, it was my mistake. Of course I know who you are, but for the record, just to say who you are. Obviously you're representing VEB, but just to say that for the record, so that we have that. Also the request: if you can keep your questions, I understand the questions, but a little bit more concise.
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[Foreign language] Steven?
I've noted down, Mr. Everts, three questions. Thank you for your questions and your comments. Clearly there are uncertain periods. It also means that this could have an impact on GDP. You see macroeconomists already decreasing the GDP levels of The Netherlands and Europe to more around 1% than initially between 1%-2%. Also on the back of higher inflation expectations. You can add the increasing oil and gas prices and the turmoil happening with the war in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. That will have a secondary impact potentially on clients who are more dependent on inputs of oil and gas. The question is, can they pass it on to their customers or not? What does that mean for broader supply chains? There are all kinds of effects that we still do not see as yet because they typically take time.
In the end, we do not know what it is going to be. Of course, there are consensus forecasts, but as you well know, especially in certain times like we've seen now or in the past, that those base forecasts have a high volatility around them. That also means that the base case scenario, there can be a base case scenario, but there can be many base case scenarios. It means that the only thing that you need to do against that is to make sure that you diversify yourself well enough, so that when you are hit, and we are a very big bank, we have a balance sheet of EUR 1.1 trillion, that you are always able to recover from that hit. Secondly, that we do a lot of stress testing to actually see what the impact of the different scenarios is.
Now, clearly, if you look at our total portfolio, we have more than EUR 700 billion in lending. Two-thirds sits in retail. Half of our lending portfolio sits in mortgages. Why am I saying that? That is those mortgages, as you well know, are largely in countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Australia, Spain, Poland, and those are all good economies with relatively low inflation levels, with relatively low unemployment, with a shortage in housing, and that helps us, that diversification, that need for housing, that good collateral, to keep our lending portfolio well in sync.
Now, as always, if there are scenarios, but we're not yet in presenting the results in 2026, we're here to talk about 2025, that there would be needs, and we have all kinds of models for that these changed macroeconomic indicators are changing to the detriment, then it also means in our models that that would lead to higher risk costs, and then we will take so. We have to see what happens in the first quarters and thereafter. When it comes to private credits, let's not debate whether private credit is good or not so good. There are enormous articles written about that. There's a long debate about that. When it comes to ING private credits, for us, it's less than 0.5% of our, or around 0.5% of our lending portfolio, so that is very small.
Of course, also there, we need to then look very well as to who do we lend that to, how well is it collateralized. Then on the investment side, because that's the second point that you made in that regard, when this private credit then is moved to, for example, private investors, so personal banking, private banking, we need to be careful because then you can run a risk of a asset liability mismatch, and we are seeing that with some of the funds that investors want to retrieve their funds and they can't, and therefore, that's also an element in terms of consumer protection that we need to take into account as well. I think the long and short of it is that our exposure is relatively limited. When it comes to the ROE, a good summary of our figures, by the way.
You are right, we are still, compared to other European banks, relatively dependent on interest income, and the reason is our history. We came from an ING Direct Postbank savings environment, if you will, and ING Direct globally, and from a broader wholesale banking lending franchise, and both have to do with interest levels. What we need to do is to become more, like I said, relevant and impactful in the economies, and also therefore more specific in what we offer, and part of that is more diversification into commission income. Now, you've seen that grow over the past number of years. Last year, even was 15%. We project 5%-10%, and as a result of all of these elements, we project by 2027 a return on equity of over 15%, and this year of around 14%.
We're confident in that growth, and why would we be confident? Because that starts with a growing number of primary customers, and you have seen our track record in the growth of primary customers, and it started in doing more business with those customers. I gave an example of that we have increased our external management and e-brokerage with 16% last year, and we are confident that in that area, in insurance, in our primary customers, in doing more business in financial markets and transaction services, we're able to gradually move the dial to a more balanced business model, and that will support that return on equity that we have projected for 2027. Let me leave it at that for now. Sorry, you had one element that was VLK, Van Lanschot Kempen. We're a proud owner of 20% in Van Lanschot Kempen.
Like I said, it is a financial stake. As part of moving relatively more capital to a more diversified business model, including more fee business. Van Lanschot Kempen is a private bank, a very good private bank, and thereby in the total mix of our capital, we gradually have moved more capital, or relatively be it small in the terms of size of ING, to private banking wealth management, which is all part of a more diversified income and net profit profile. Thank you.
If I may. The latter point, just one. Do you make any use of interaction between the employees of Van Lanschot Kempen and ING? Experience, is the strategy aligned or is it really a financial investment solo?
We treat it as a financial investment and therefore there is no specific interaction between Van Lanschot and ING employees other than people typically would interact with each other.
No, there's no agreement or nothing in that regard, no.
They just hired me. That's it. It's cheaper.
Except for hiring the chair.
It's free. Much cheaper. I will now move to three. My good friend with the magnificent beard. How are you?
I'm good. I'm great. Thank you.
Your beard looks a bit more trimmed than.
Does it?
Yeah. I'm still jealous. If you could identify yourself instead of just going to come to the question, please. Thank you.
Of course. My name is Gillian Gailliaert, and I work at PGGM. Today, I'm here on behalf of Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn, and several other Eumedion members. I have two questions. First question is on Russia. ING has terminated the sale of its Russian business, and says it's assessing next steps. Could the executive board clarify which exit options are still realistically available, whether an orderly wind down is one of them, and how investors will be updated on the path that ING chooses? Secondly, on operational continuity, given ING's dependence on U.S.-based cloud software and AI providers, how would the executive board safeguard ING's operational continuity if a serious deterioration in transatlantic relations were to restrict access to critical U.S. technology services, for example, AI or Microsoft? And to what extent are credible fallback options already in place?
Pertinent and interesting questions. Thank you. I'll give it to Steven.
On Russia, the reason why we stopped the conversations with the buyer is that we have sufficient information to believe that there is no realistic expectation of getting approval on that buyer to buy our activities in Russia, and that means that we should not waste further time in focusing on something that is very unlikely going to happen. I've said previously on many occasions that we don't see a role for ourselves in Russia. It is not so straightforward as we all want. It means that we continue to scale down our operations. It means that we are further completing the disconnection of the Russian business or the bank with all other operations from ING, and we continue to look at options in light of what just happened further than only scaling down and ring-fencing the operation in Russia. That's where we currently are.
As soon as there is something to report on that, I will let you know. We're of course unhappy that we were not able to complete this sale.
Sure.
On AI and the dependence, I think your broader question is already the dependence on U.S. cloud AI infrastructure software, maybe the whole value chain.
Right.
That is a phenomenon that was also mentioned in the Draghi and Letta report, that in Europe, we are dependent on many parts of infrastructure and otherwise on other parts of the world. I think the realization has come for many of us, including ING, that we need, from a resilience perspective, be able to own more of key infrastructural sectors in Europe as well and do not make ourselves only dependent on other parts of the world, even when they are partners. I think that it would be too quick for me to say that we are completely independent because we are not. We also, as a bank and as a digital bank, have dependencies on many systems that have not been developed into Europe. Obviously, we are looking into alternatives. Obviously, we look at continuity planning in case some part of our network would not work.
Obviously, we're talking to partners in our own country and in other countries to see whether we can have more diversification, but this will be a medium-term to long-term game. There is no independence at this point. I'm sorry to say so.
Thank you, Steven. Before I move to anyone else, there are questions that have popped up on the screen. They're from Sarasin & Partners, MN, EdenTree, and Accion. There are two questions. One is about Deloitte, our incoming auditor. I will ignore that because that's about 2026. They're not present in the room. The first one is relevant, and that is, I'll read out the question. "Given the high level of exposure and elevated uncertainty associated with climate change and the energy transition, we would like to ask the audit committee to commit providing investors with enhanced visibility in forthcoming reporting of, one, results from ING's climate-related stress testing and long-term climate resilience analysis for capital adequacy. Question two - Qualitative analysis underpinning the board's determination that a-
PMA
PMA of just EUR 47 million is sufficient to cover transition risks. Three, analysis underpinning the.
Conclusions
... conclusions that-
Physical risks
That physical risks are.
Immaterial.
Jesus, it is difficult to read. Immaterial to the financial statements in the short to medium term. It's part my age, part the light, the way it's reflecting. For sensitivity analysis for more severe climate-related scenarios in the notes to the financial statements. These are the various questions, and some of them are actually for the Audit Committee Chair. If I may hand it over to Margarete.
Yeah. Your first question, I try to do it in the order you asked, was about transparency of the results of the stress testing. We do not really publicly disclose the detailed results from internal stress testing exercises, whether climate-related or otherwise. The capital adequacy is assessed through the comprehensive internal capital assessment process, and this is subject, as you know, to supervisory review under the ECB Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process, the so-called SREP. As part of this process, the climate-related risks are considered by the supervisor alongside other risk drivers. The outcome of the most recent SREP did not result in any additional climate-related capital requirement for ING, and this supports our own conclusion that capital adequacy is sufficient. Your second question was about the amount of EUR 47 million adjustment to ECL.
Margarete, maybe that's about PMA.
Okay
why EUR 47 million is sufficient. I'll hand it over to Ljiljana.
Okay.
Thank you very much. In addition to what Margarete just explained around the internal stress testing, I can only repeat, similarly, we do not publicly disclose detailed quantitative analysis or models that are underpinning those management overlays. What I can say is definitely that there is a number of quantitative and qualitative inputs that actually shape that assessment, and that those assessments are part of the internal risk framework, which is being regularly also looked at by external auditor. What is also important to say that when you mentioned on the third question, I believe was on a physical risk assessment, whether we feel comfortable with the conclusion of our assessments that the physical risks on short and medium term do not materially and significantly impact our financial position. I would agree with that. Why?
Because it's generally expected that the consequences of the physical risks are to be expected in a longer term, mid- to longer-term, so sometimes or most often after 10 years. While if I look, for example, only at the structure of our, for example, Wholesale Banking portfolio, almost two thirds of our portfolio actually has maturity shorter than three years. Definitely, we do use the results of the internal stress testing and scenarios, including physical risk, for our risk management purposes, but not for the assessment and qualitative measurement of our financial statements.
Thank you, Ljiljana. I'll now move back to the room. No, the second one is the light. The lady in blue in microphone four.
Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Melanie Oldham. I came all the way from the United States from a small town called Freeport, Texas on the Texas Gulf Coast. Our town is surrounded by Port Freeport, Dow, BASF, and we live three mi from Freeport LNG, pre-treatment plant on one side, liquefaction plant on the other. Again, we are considered sacrifice communities. I have friends that live in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Plaquemine, Louisiana, Port Arthur, Freeport, Corpus Christi, and down in Brownsville. The reason why we're called sacrifice communities is that LNG companies tend to always build in low-income, people of colour areas. For instance, where I live, it's 65% Hispanic, Black, and white, and very low income. Quite frankly, I think they think that we can't organize and speak up and tell you about all the risk that we live with every day. Again, my question is.
Oh, on Freeport LNG, they exploded in 2022. Then since then, they've had 70 incidents, violations, explosions. We had hoped after that they would've improved, but we found out in the investigation that all the U.S. LNGs have a shortage of well-trained employees, poor maintenance, and other issues. My question is, what is ING Bank's timeline to phase out or transition from financing of fossil fuels, specifically U.S. LNG infrastructure? That's my question. When you say transition or phase out, does that mean we're hoping within a few years? It's very urgent to us or communities that live next door to these dangerous LNGs. I want to say, I know that ING Bank took a step forward to stop financing of LNG projects and also stop financing expansion of the U.S. LNG projects.
However, it's urgent to not finance these LNG corporations. For example, my friends live in Louisiana near Venture Global's planned CP2 plant. They've already proven to be a bad neighbour. They did dredging project that basically destroyed all the shrimps and oysters and things that a lot of people in Louisiana make their living on. Again, my question is: what is ING Bank's timeline to phase out transition from financing of fossil fuels, specifically U.S. LNG infrastructure?
Thank you, ma'am. Your question is about the timeline. I'll give it to Steven to respond to your question.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question. I think a few comments I would like to make. First of all, indeed, we did stop as per the end of 2025, financing new project finance for export LNG terminals that you were also alluding to. We do provide project finance for import LNG terminals, but those are people who receive it. For example, many countries in Europe do that, including the Netherlands and Germany. It shows that we are still dependent on fossil fuels because 80% of the energy still comes from fossil fuels, including heating and cooking oil and transportation, electricity. That's also why decarbonization is so crucial with new technologies. At the same time, we see that, with the uncertainty happening currently, that's also the affordability and security of energy play a countervailing role. That's why the transition is so important.
It is just too difficult given dependency to stop straight away. We stopped project finance to export terminals, including the ones in the U.S. We continue to provide generic financing and we are looking in our own Terra approach, which is mostly about emission intensity, how we gradually decrease towards the goal of net zero by 2050. It will be a transition phase. You cannot go from one day to the other.
Real quick, I want to add that our sacrificed communities on the Louisiana-Texas coast, you almost have to come see it, but we have human rights violations. I'm a healthcare professional. We have all kinds of health problems, cancer. I could go on and on. Environmental problems. We have the right to have clean air and a quality of life. I appreciate you listening. Please take the next step to transition away from fossil fuels, specifically LNG, and finance renewables. Thank you.
Thank you, ma'am. I'll now move to five. The lady in green, our friend from Milieudefensie. If you could just state your name and obviously identify yourself and the question, please.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Thank you. What I'm going to do is stop clicking please. Just allow us to answer. What I'm going to do is go to six, take the questions and then come back and answer your questions. If you allow me please. If I can go to six.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Thank you. Moving to three and then back to four. Just to take the questions in. Please, if you can keep your questions short and focused so that we can answer everybody. Identify yourself, please.
Goedemiddag. Good afternoon. My name is Freek van Til. I'm here to represent VBDO, de Vereniging van Beleggers voor Duurzame Ontwikkeling. I want to thank you first and your colleagues for meeting with us before and to discuss some of the themes that we find really important for this year, including pollution, CSRD, and living wages. We have a few more questions, mainly on pollution. I'll read it in full and all at once. ING actively monitors pollution related risks, identifies clients with elevated exposure and engages these clients to mitigate risks, including through its involvement in UN working groups on hazardous chemicals. At the same time, pollution remains classified as a non-material topic on the CSRD.
Given the scale and the systemic nature of chemical pollution, we would like to better understand how ING manages and monitors these risks in practice and how this is reflected in its public disclosures. The production and use of hazardous chemicals are associated with significant harm, both environmental and human health, including cancer, biodiversity loss and increasing healthcare costs. At the same time, we see and we note regulatory liability and reputational risks for companies that are exposed to these hazardous chemicals are increasing, particularly in relation to persistent substances such as PFAS. If not properly addressed, these risks may translate into declining valuations, higher costs, and reduce long term viability for client companies, which in turn may pose financial risk to ING. Considering these risks, we would like to ask ING to take the following steps.
Will ING publicly disclose the list of the substances of concern and hazardous chemicals it monitors across its client portfolio, including a clear timeline for such disclosure? Will ING set clear, time-bound expectations for clients to phase out the most harmful substances, including PFAS, and publicly report on its progress? We've shared further recommendations with you in writing, but I'll leave those for now. On CSRD, mainly on stakeholder engagement, ING outlines its stakeholder engagement approach in its annual report, including engagement with various stakeholder groups and the use of different methods such as dialogue and surveys. We understand that ING engages mainly indirectly with affected communities. For example, through civil society organizations and NGOs acting as proxies for so-called silent stakeholders.
While VBDO appreciates these efforts, it remains unclear to us how affected stakeholders are defined, how their perspectives are consistently captured, and how these insights translate into decision making as well as risk management. Considering that, we'd like to ask ING whether it's willing to take the following steps. Will ING clearly define and publicly disclose who it considers affected stakeholders and affected communities, including which groups fall under these categories in practice? Secondly, will ING strengthen its approach to stakeholder engagement to ensure that affected stakeholders are meaningfully involved rather than primarily represented indirectly through intermediaries? Thank you.
Thank you. Can we move to four? I'll give the word to Steven to take the question. We do the next round.
Yes. Thank you.[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
May I make you a request? Can you come to the question? Just come to the question. We'll do our best to answer.
[Foreign language]
If you click, we can't get to the answers. It's your colleagues, so ask them, please. Steven, if I can give you the word.
Thank you. There we go again. Clearly, and I've said it before, the world needs to reduce emissions, but steering towards an absolute reduction level for a bank does not lead to a responsible transition. The 48% that you mentioned, Winnie, is a reduction and you know that. That's a target for the world as a whole to reach the Paris goals. It does not mean that every company individually needs to reach that 48%, because it also ignores the different sectors that companies are operating in, but also in this case, the role of a bank that is playing in that economy. Therefore, what we have said. We as a bank largely use an emissions intensity approach and that approach is widely recognized by the market because it enables active engagement and it also enables transition rather than stopping everything straight away. It enables engagement with clients.
It enables therefore the transition and therefore it has more impact than rather simply withdrawing support. Transition is about an equitability in sustainability. We're doing that also with affordability and security of energy. That is what that Paris Agreement was about. As a bank, the biggest impact that we can make is, like I said, through, first of all, helping companies to change their processes to drive down emissions. Secondly is to use financing for new technologies, including renewable technologies. I just outlined that a little bit, and it's also shown on the slide. Thirdly, also to include more people that are our clients or elsewhere in society to do that. Therefore, it also, for example, requires investments in renewable technologies, for example renewable power projects, for example wind projects.
If we, for example, finance more wind projects, it also means that our emissions go up, but we're still doing the right thing. We do have the same goal as Milieudefensie, but we do clearly disagree on the way to get there. We are confident with our approach. By the way, sorry Winnie, one second. That is also supported by scientists and we will stick to that approach.
[Forein language]
I'm not the chair.
[Foreign language] Could I please respond to the answer given?
Yes. If you keep it brief, please. That's the request.
[Foreign language]
In terms of drive down, we do have these decarbonization paths in our annual report. As you can see, some of them were close to the line and other ones we are not. It is indeed not easy to get to that 1.5 degree with some of these sectors, such as the hard to abate sectors. That still means that we contribute and work with our clients to go in that direction. The transition is happening, but it does not go in a straight line. When it then comes to items two and three. Let me give you that example of renewable energy, how we increase our renewable energy financing. Specific project financing for renewable energy from EUR 7 billion to close to EUR 10 billion. That is a significant step up there as well. I think we are working in all these three dimensions with our clients.
I see there is a world to win because we have not touched your heart, I can see. That's something that we will need to consider. Let me move on with also the question on microphone number 4, because I think that is a similar question, but then in this case on Eni, the Italian integrated oil company or power company. I think there, what we have said is that we want to follow science because a transition needs time. 80% of the world, and I'm sorry to say, but we still also see that now in a dependency in this crisis, also in Iran, the dependency that the world has on oil and gas. The world needs time and needs new technologies to step away from it.
That also means it will take time to decarbonize, but again, affordability and security are part of that transition path to the future. We want, and we are aiming, and we are working in line with international climate guidance, including SBTi, for example, or IPCC. At the same time, given where we currently are, we do continue to finance oil and gas companies wherever. However, we have stopped providing dedicated financing to new oil and gas field developments and to new LNG export terminals. Again, because we act in line with science, in this case, the International Energy Agency. That, by the way, is looking at that in different scenarios. We look at those type of scientists who follow that approach. Therefore, we stopped specific new oil and gas fields, but we continue with generic financing.
I think that also answers the question for the lady at microphone six, because that was the same question in the end that was asked at microphone number five.
Sorry, volgens mij is mijn vraag niet beantwoord. Ik vroeg wanneer u gaat stoppen met het financieren-
Sorry, I'm going to.
[Foreign language]
Sorry, can you please. There's a long line behind six, behind you, and behind five. I need to give them all a chance to ask the question. Please allow them to ask the questions. We'll bundle it and then answer it together.
Her question is answered. [Foreign language]
Yeah.
[Foreign language]
Yeah. That's why I said we follow a intensity approach, and therefore we said we will stop dedicated project finance because that is in line with science, and it does not mean that we need to stop with generic financing to these companies. We will look at this on a portfolio level, not at an individual level. We go to the questions of VBDO at microphone three. I think you first asked two questions on behalf of somebody else, I believe.
Sorry, not on someone else, no.
Oh, yeah. Well, on behalf of yourself. All right. Excellent.
Yeah.
Good. Okay. That was then about how do we deal with the list of hazardous chemicals, and you rightfully pointed out that we're working with the UN Global Framework on Chemicals. Why are we doing that? We are doing that because we are contributing to a methodology also for the financial sector, because in the end, we need to have a consistent guidance across the world that will help for everybody to move into the same direction. It also means that on hazardous chemicals, we need a methodology for the financial sector to incorporate that then in our policies as well to make sure we incorporate it into screening and consequently also in the lending practices. Now, that currently is not there. You know that we are part of that group of people and organizations that is pushing that in the UN Global Framework.
That also has a number of organization countries in them. We want it to be there because only when it is there, then we have a methodology that is independent and that is currently not there. Currently, we are unable to provide you with a list of the substances of concern and hazardous chemicals because it is not yet a set list. That's on those questions on hazardous chemicals. The same as we work for a plastics treaty, and we want to have a plastics treaty, we also want to work for a list on hazardous chemicals. Apologies. It's for hazardous chemicals. On the affected stakeholders that you talk about, and you ask for a definition of people that may be affected. Look, we are present in 100 countries. We do business with millions of customers.
Therefore, we are engaging with many stakeholders in this regard, whether this is an employer or a procurement officer of personal services. In different areas, the relationship depends on different activities and different relationships, and therefore it is very hard at this point in time to come to one single definition of what an affected group means or affected community means, and therefore we still are needing to deal with that on a case-by-case basis. Then based on that one-to-one basis to see: are we talking here about a certain minority or affected group that we need to take into account? How do we deal with that then on an idiosyncratic basis in this time, in this particular situation? This is even more difficult, because people do not agree what a definition is of a specific affected group.
We want to be guided by international, I would say, frameworks as much as we can. It doesn't exist here and therefore we need to take it on a one-by-one basis. We do publicly disclose the main categories of stakeholder groups that we have. I realize that you're looking for something more specific. That is something that we cannot give you and therefore we also do not consider to change the current stakeholder engagement approach unless there are more clearly defined definitions of such affected stakeholder groups.
Thank you, Steven. What I'd like to do is take questions from six, five, and four. If you could identify yourself, please, if you could just ask the question as requested. I know sometimes you have to set the context to ask the question, but if you can keep it brief so that we can ask. Please.
Good afternoon. I have a question about liquefied natural gas carriers. My name is Peter, by the way. An LNG carrier financed today will operate for 25-38 years, meaning it could still be moving fossil gas in the year 2067. That is way past your own net zero deadline in 2050. There's also substantial projected oversupply of LNG carriers. I have a very specific and quick question: does ING plan to introduce restrictions on financing LNG carriers? And if not, how does the board reconcile financing infrastructure that will operate well beyond 2050 with its own net zero commitment? That's my first question. I'd like to ask a second, which is: Steven, you mentioned that we are very dependent on fossil fuels at the moment, and that the energy crisis and the war in Iran shows that.
ING has played a really important role in making us dependent on those fossil fuels, especially U.S. LNG. Will you admit now, given the current stakes and current situation, that that was a mistake, that you've made us more dependent on fossil fuels than we needed to be?
I think we're dependent on how consumers work, but 5.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon. [Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
To start with microphone four: clearly, I think that goes for the world as a whole, given the speed of decarbonization and the need for more energy, there are challenges in parts of society to move in line with the targets that Paris has set. There is no denying there. You see that amongst others, and you name a few sectors such as cement or steel. Those are, you know that as well as I do, since you're a climate scientist, that those are the hard-to-abate sectors. Which basically means that there is not a good alternative or not a good carbon alternative or lower carbon alternative for the way that cement or steel are being made.
I've given myself on many occasions also in the public press, the example of steel that is made by not heating coal, but by ovens that are fueled by coking coal, that by the way, has even a worse emission level than heating coal. The way to decarbonize those ovens is by doing that by hydrogen. These ovens, and therefore the steel price or the cost to make that steel is a multiple of what it is made for now. That means that the sector needs to be able to phase out of those ovens at the same time, so to have the same, what we call sunset days, to be able to do this. Otherwise, if one of these steel companies move in the first place, it means that they are out of business because they don't set the steel price.
It also means that on some of these sectors, we need policy intervention. That goes for the third pillar of what we do, is to take everybody along, which also means that we have advocacy on many levels, both in country, in sector, and at the supranational level to see if also there are policy interventions for these hard to abate sectors to change.
[Foreign language]
We continue to work on moving towards these goals, but there are challenges.
[Foreign language]
I think that's our response. You're either happy with it or you're not. Five and six, Steven.
Yeah. The Eerlijke Bankwijzer. I appreciate the question to the lady on microphone five, but we do not collaborate with the Eerlijke Bankwijzer because they use a self-proclaimed list of criteria that basically state that banks who in themselves are difficult to compare, are unfair or dishonest. I'm very sorry, but that is not a basis to collaborate well. We do not follow the criteria of the Eerlijke Bankwijzer or of NGOs. We follow the criteria of science and that's it. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. I wish you were, but you are not. 2050, therefore, is the Paris goal. Our policies aimed at that. We're transparent about giving updates on that, and therefore, we do not consider Eerlijke Bankwijzer as a form that we need to attest to be honest.
[Foreign language]
Yeah. We're happy to elaborate that offline, but there are so many things that they use or misuse that I don't even want to start now. I think that it would be good for Eerlijke Bankwijzer to be much more factual and precise about things that they are currently now. When that happens, there's always external benchmarks that we look at to become better and to see where others do better, because we also want to do better, but not by means of what they are doing.
We'll talk offline then. Thank you.
Very good. On item six. Thanks for asking the question. I think that, look, we do not agree with the statement that we have made society dependent on fossil fuels, but it is a fact.
That's not what I said.
Well, you said that there was your second.
You've made us dependent on U.S. LNG specifically. That's what you have.
Right, okay.
through your financing, made us dependent on.
Right. On LNG specific. Let me then broaden the answer on that comment. Clearly, we do see that also now happening in Europe, there is dependency on fossil fuels. There's also, by the way, dependency on LNG, as you now see with more import LNG terminals being built in Europe, especially after what happened in Russia, for a number of countries to receive LNG, including this country, by the way.
We could have decided to phase out fossil fuels to reduce our energy demand, but we chose to.
It's not that simple. Please allow Steven to answer the question. You can have your own opinion.
Please answer the question.
which is fine. Let him answer the question first, please.
Therefore, we are society at large, including ING. We are where we are, and that means that, given the Paris Accords and our attestation that we want to move in line with the Paris Accords, that we as societies will need to transition greatly to move away from a carbon-intensive society. It will take time. There is no easy answer whether I like it or not. That means that in line with science, because it takes time in terms of an affordable and security and sustainability to take time to transition to a more carbon-intensive world, that also includes LNG. That's why in line with science, we have stopped the financing of LNG terminals, but we need more time to get more carbon-intensive, and it will not happen overnight.
It was not a mistake to finance.
I think we're going around in a circle. You're entitled to.
There's no circle.
Yeah, we are. You are entitled to a view, but in a democratic society.
I asked-
It's not just a view of one.
I asked whether.
We're reflecting our collective needs of what's required in Europe, and Steven has given you the answer. You may not like it, I accept that. You may not accept it, I like that. I mean, I accept that. I think.
It is what it is. We'll move to
It was a good idea to be dependent on Trump, and he's using our dependency.
Ask for yourself when society makes a choice in Europe, across the board.
I didn't choose to finance those terminals. That's your choice, not mine, not ours.
Who is ours here in this case? You or the society at large?
There was no political debate about our dependency on Russia.
This is a democratic society, so use it through the ballot box.
You have a lot more power than I do in this democratic society.
Five, please.
Hope for Children from the World Council of Churches. From their faith, churches stand up for the most vulnerable. Churches are meant to do this, to speak from their faith for those without a voice or influence. Today, I want to speak from my faith for children and future generations, because they are the ones who suffer the most under the consequences of the climate crisis, but have the least influence. In our church, we celebrated Easter last weekend. This is the most important holiday in our faith. It's about hope. It's about reconciliation. It's about life. As a church, we believe that reconciliation is possible. We believe in the possibility of restoration. When we turn away from the injustice we are a part of and choose new paths, we trust in the possibility of restoration. That is grace.
No one has to remain stuck in the evil they began. Everyone can choose life. You have a lot of influence, and today I invite you to use that influence for life. Today is a chance to move toward more reconciliation and more restoration. Let yourself be inspired by the Easter celebration, is my invitation. Let's make this concrete. Those who finance the fossil fuel industry facilitate its devastating impact on the earth, and those who finance the launch of new oil and gas projects contribute to destruction from which especially children and future generations will suffer. This is now my concrete question: What do you need to choose for the children and the future generations? What do you need to choose reconciliation?
Microphone four, and then I'll give the word to Steven.
Hello, my name is Louise Wagner. I represent Reclaim Finance, and I will also ask my questions in collaboration with the Rainforest Action Network. I want to start off with a little comment, that eating cookies while somebody is telling you that people are dying because of your decisions is quite disrespectful, and I hope that this does not reflect your attitude towards these topics at large. I want to first give you guys some breathing time, give you a compliment for a change, that we are actually recognizing and commending ING for not participating in the final investment decision for the CP2 project. We see that your policy on not financing new LNG infrastructure or new LNG export terminals is being effective, so congratulations on that.
However, ING is also, and you can guess where I'm going next, the world's largest financier of the company that is developing this project, which is Venture Global. The world's largest methane gas expansionist, whose core business is focusing on expanding LNG infrastructure, and who is also facing lawsuits from gas purchasers and from local communities, who has been cited for over 2,000 air pollution violations, has well-documented ties to the U.S. or to the Trump administration directly, meaning its two founders were not only major donors to the Trump's campaign, but ample evidence also suggests that they have leveraged that relationship for favourable legislation and trade perks.
By sustaining a client relationship with the company, and don't worry, I don't expect you to comment on your client relationship with this company, ING is actively financing the peril of fisheries, local as well as global livelihoods, the worsening of an already out-of-hand climate crisis, and the very administration that is currently waging war in the Middle East, which is not supporting defense, but is supporting active war, allying with governments accused of an ongoing genocide, waging war in USG, waging war against poor and working-class people, and so on and so forth. All of these wars that might seem far away from these halls of discussion, but are and will ever more increasingly affect every individual in this room far beyond the high price of fuels that you put in your car, for instance.
We are living through a decisive historical moment, as you yourself mentioned in your remarks, in the beginning remarks, and the matter of providing money directly through loans or indirectly through capital market activities to companies such as Venture Global is a matter of nudging the destiny of democracy that you also just referenced, and humanity very closely and potentially over the edge of the cliff. As a globally relevant bank and as one of the strongest proponents of climate
Can you get to your question, please?
ING can and in fact, has to play its role in deciding which route the world is taking. This is not an overstatement, but it is the simple and crude reality of the present moment. Now I'm coming to my question that is twofold. First, ING's volume-based climate targets currently apply to its lending portfolio, which is great. In light of ING's recent participation in the $9 billion revolving credit facility for Eni, could the board clarify whether there are plans to extend these targets to capital market activities such as underwriting and advisory? The second one, following ongoing stakeholder dialogue, including concerns raised regarding financing for companies such as Venture Global, could the board elaborate on the criteria it uses to determine when exclusion policies should be expanded beyond direct project finance to include corporate lending and bond underwriting?
Put more bluntly, what more does it take other than human rights violations, environmental destruction, financing fascism, driving war, and exacerbating the climate crisis for a bank leading on environmental, social, and governance to stop financing those driving all of the above?
All right. Thank you, and apologies if the energy bar of Steven caused you offense. He just needs the energy. Steven, the word.
Thank you. I start with microphone five. Well, I really appreciate the words that you're saying, by the way, so it's well said. I think, look, this is like I said already in the beginning about that we also want the world to decarbonize, but it's also a matter of choosing how we want to do that. You did not make a statement in that regard because your question was when we would choose for children and reconciliation, if I translate this right. I think our way to choose for a more sustainable future, this is about environmental sustainability, is to work with our clients to help them to transition, and that is an approach that we believe works much better than an approach of exclusion. That's what I would like to respond to what you very nicely put forward just now.
Regarding the microphone four lady or microphone four. Again, you mentioned a specific client, and as you know, I will not respond to a specific client. It's good to make a distinction between policies and targets. The latter, the targets, are used to measure what our progress is in our existing policies, such as the different client paths on sustainability. For upstream oil and gas, we have set volume-based targets because those are the direct energy sources. Therefore we set volume-based targets. There's a difference between targets and policies. That we announced a policy whereby we gradually phase out lending to pure-play exploration and production companies by 2040.
That also means, because you also mentioned bonds and underwritings, it also means that if you then phase out to these pure-play oil and gas companies that only involve themselves with oil and gas fields and new oil and gas fields, then we will also gradually phase out of those because that's an automatic consequence of that. What is more challenging is, in general, integrated oil and gas companies because a number of these companies are in transition to gradually to also do more sustainable and renewable energies. It goes with ups and downs and two steps forward and one step back. Also in light of the balance between sustainability, affordability, and security. For those companies, we use intensity metrics.
Again, because we said if you look at the upstream part of it, we phase out. We also therefore phased out in terms of new oil and gas fields and also export energy terminals. That does not mean that we do not continue to finance them overall, but therefore we look at the intensity metrics that we use as well, and then we look at our overall portfolio, not necessarily to one company, and that's the way that we steer in our overall Terra approach that we have set for 2050. I think with that, because that also was about when will you then set your targets date on generic financing. I think that was also asked by one of the previous speakers on microphone four. We don't set a specific date.
We look at our intensity metrics to see how we move towards the target we have set towards 2050.
Can we move to item microphone six? Please, if you could identify yourself and
Yeah.
[Foreign language]
Microphone 5.
[Foreign language]
[ Foreign language] Microphone 4.
Hello, my name is Laura Diaz Sanchez. I represent the Break Free From Plastic movement. I would like to address ING's role in the plastic crisis, which is now a public health crisis. Globally, only 9% of plastic is recycled, and rather than slowing down, production is accelerating and will soon outpace waste management capacity. We are being locked into plastic production for decades to come. ING publicly recognizes plastic pollution as a material risk and advocates for a global plastics treaty, as it was mentioned. Yet it continues to facilitate the financing of companies expanding virgin plastic production. Can ING disclose its financial exposure to the ethane cracker in Antwerp, INEOS Project One, which is already experiencing delays and legal challenges, as shown by INEOS filing a EUR 1.5 billion claim against the Flemish government?
Explain why ING is exposing shareholders to significant regulatory and financial risks through this project. When will ING set clear requirements for the companies it finances across the plastics value chain to disclose their plastic footprint, set time-bound reduction targets and prioritize reuse and refill over downstream or technological solutions?
I'll give the word to Steven.
Let me start with the gentleman at microphone number six. Again, because you asked: when will you stop financing these types of companies that are, I don't know how you exactly said, polluting or increasing emissions? What I've said is that we have an inclusive approach. Because a number of these companies, the real world, is looking at new technologies and new ways of production methodologies, including new types of energy sources that are less emission-intensive and thereby decreasing, either in an absolute way that is being advocated sometimes or an intensity way, the emission levels. For some industries that is easier than for others.
What we have said is that we choose to be client inclusive. Transition in the world in itself means it takes time, and that we mean that we want to help customers. It also means that therefore it takes time for them to transition. I even said, for example, if we do more renewable projects, financing more renewable windmills, we ourselves will increase our own emission levels. We are still financing windmills that are from an intensity level in and of itself good. We do not advocate or choose a direction whereby we just say goodbye because clients cannot move. We want to help them. We want to make plans with them. We want to help them in their processes to drive down emissions. We want to finance new technologies and it will take time. If I may, because you also mentioned the Eerlijke Geldwijzer.
Yeah. Let me also say. There was also, yeah, he mentioned Eerlijke Geldwijzer, and then she said, "You probably don't like external benchmarks so much." No, I do like external benchmarks very much, but when they're based on facts and science, and I do not consider the Eerlijke Bankwijzer or Geldwijzer in that regard. Let me give you an example, and it was also mentioned earlier this date was, well, with the total emission level, that it's just either misusing facts or miscontextualizing facts. People are saying, "Yeah, but your emission levels are higher than of the Netherlands." Okay. We are a global operating bank providing EUR 750 billion in financing. You can say it's higher than Netherlands, but we are also a global operating company.
You are saying in this regard, yeah, but also the Eerlijke Geldwijzer said that you're also financing more projects that are not good or something in those lines. That's true because we're a very big bank, but we're also financing more renewable energy projects than all of the other Dutch banks combined. That's why I'm saying if you only say that sentence and you don't put a context around it doesn't mean that much. I'm not saying that we're so good because we're financing more renewable projects than all the other Dutch banks combined, but it depends on the context in which you say it. The lady on five. I cannot comment on what happened 25 years ago, to be honest. It's well noted.
I gave the comment on whether I like external benchmarks or not, but I try to give a context to that. Yes, the Terra approach is something that we call that Terra, but Terra is based on the IEA, the International Energy Agency. It's not a methodology that we said, "Oh, but why don't we then as ING do something like this because we like it?" No, we want to link ourselves to something that is, as far as we can see, in line with the international agreement. Even the International Energy Agency makes different scenarios or different baseline scenarios with different probabilities. Even science cannot yet be exact of what will happen.
They say if we would all move in this direction, then with a certain probability we can keep climate change or temperature rise limited to one and a half or two or whatever the one would focus on. We have linked ourselves to International Energy Agency because we believe it is a very good scientific body that was also consulted as part of the Paris Agreement so that we can move in line with that science. Even there is debate upon, okay, what are the next steps? It's even there it is evolving and we need to focus on that as well. That also means that your question was, okay, will that something mean for the remaining 70%?
Well, it comes also back to someone else who said that previously said, "Well, you have not put targets on the majority of your emission levels." Well, we want to put targets on as many emission levels as we can, as long as there is a good measurement for it. For sectors that there are, we put measurements on it. For sectors where there is not a good scientific approach as yet, it is more difficult to put measurement on it because in the end, what you want to say is that do we all agree on these facts or directions? You can have a much better conversation with your clients to move in a certain direction. We want to increase the scope, but we can only do so if there's better data available.
On a number of sectors and business lines where that is currently not the case, for example, for smaller business, for example, where we don't have that data as yet, but it is gradually expanding, and that's what we also see in our reporting. Gradually, we take more and more of our own book into account when we look at our Terra approach. You said something that they said. Does it then mean that you will set absolute reduction levels on these elements? The answer is, and I said it in the beginning also to Winnie, is that we are focusing largely on intensity-based. We have absolute decreases in the number of the initial oil and gas and coal emission levels on those type of companies, and at least on those projects.
When you talk about most of the sectors, we look at intensity and like I said, if we do more wind energy, the intensity of the CO2 emission of a integrated power company goes down, but the emission levels go up. That's why we work with intensity rather than with absolute emissions. I move to the madam at microphone number four. I think we share the goal that we want to move into a direction. You mentioned that we are also giving input to the UN and to a number of combined forums which include nation states, companies, scientists, and a few financiers. We are being seen as an expert in this area.
Also there we work with the UN to say, can we come to a standard that gets us to a plastic treaty and therefore to something that people acknowledge as being the standard of how we set direction towards plastic and which type of plastics we can use, like the single use of plastics and other areas of plastic, and how we can stimulate reuse and decrease pollution and emission levels from that point of view. Unfortunately, that is not there. I know that several times these forums have tried to come to an agreement. I must say, and I regret that we are not yet there. We, the plural we. That forum has not yet come there to set a target.
I think we need a target from an UN or other global or international setting to drive for a number of these sectors to drive in that direction. That also makes it easier for a bank, just like we talked about hazardous substances, to then act on this framework going forward. We are not there yet. I also note that you mentioned INEOS, but I will not give comments on individual clients. Thank you.
We'll take two more questions.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
What I'm going to do is take two more. I think the last two questions. You came in too late. I understand. No, I understand that, but I also have to give the colleagues behind you the chance. I'll come to you, and then we'll close the session. Just give me a second. Six and five. Four has had its chance.
[Foreign language]
Thank you. We'll come to you. five, please.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tim Balemans. I work for Dutch fiduciary manager MN. I'm here today also on behalf of our client PME, Pensioenfonds PME. I'm here on behalf of co-lead Robeco, who's also here in the room. We are co-leads of the Engagement Coalition on Climate, called the IIGCC. We welcome the opportunity to speak to you today as active shareholders. As I'm one of the last ones of today, I'll come straight to our two questions. How does the board ensure that ING's climate strategy leads to consequences in financing decisions, including clear decisions not to refinance when clients are structurally off track towards the 2030 targets? How will the board decide if the strategy needs to be strengthened if this does not deliver alignment with its current reduction pathway?
Acknowledged. We'll come back. Number two, this is the last question in the round.
[Foreign language]
Thank you. I'll give the word to Steven. This is the last round, as I said.
[Foreign language]. Maybe on the lady on microphone six. As you know, we will not discuss individual clients, but we do uphold our policy. Our definition thereof new fuels also aligns with the definition of the International Energy Agency. I think that we here have a case of a disagreement on facts.
To that you do uphold your policy, but not for individual clients. That doesn't make any sense.
No, that doesn't make any sense and therefore that's not the case. That's a false statement.
Will you or will you not keep financing pure play oil and gas companies?
If they're only doing pure play and therefore opening new fields, we will not continue to finance them. That's our policy.
If I come here and I ask you about one specific company that does exactly that, then you are not going to comment on it.
My response to that was: we have a disagreement on facts. You can repeat it again, but then I will respond the same thing again. We have a disagreement on facts.
On microphone five
That is about what do we now do with clients, I believe, who are structurally off track and how do we then discuss that? Well, actually, those are two questions, to be honest. The first one is how do we directly work with clients when we do financing and we come to a decision on how does their transition work? That's the first one. The second one is actually how do we assess whether our approach actually still works? That is not necessarily the same as the first one. When you look at the client level, so pure one client, that approach is inclusive. We work closely with our clients to see how can we mitigate risk. You can sometimes...
I use the steel sector, but you can also say the same for the aluminum sector, or you can look at the cement sector. The example I gave for the steel sector, you also have for cement. Then we go, "Oh, but let's not all use cement anymore." Yeah, I'm sorry, but people are using cement, and that is just where it is. The alternative currently, if you wanted to still use cement, is not so easy. Therefore, there is no policy available, even when these companies would want so and therefore we continue to work with those companies. Does that mean that then on that sector, we're going to deviate?
Yes, that is what it will mean, and therefore we need to continue to look at alternative sources or renewable energy or maybe different use of materials to be able to transition to a lower carbon world. Now, we do however work with client transition plans and with a number of clients we say, "Okay, what is now the baseline that we're talking about? What is your emission level? Where does your emission level come from? And what can you do to actually transition to a lower environment?" Then we have those conversations on a year-by-year basis, and we look at our total portfolio in terms of how it is now on an aggregate basis, because some can move quicker than others to see whether at the board level we move in line in a sector or not.
I say the approach from one single client may be different than on a sector overall.
I think it's totally clear.
I don't know.
Oh, I think it's totally clear. Thanks for this elaboration here. I also believe that you mentioned that you'd rather go into an engagement than exclusion in that sense. May I maybe ask one follow-up question? How does the board assess whether client engagement is producing sufficiently meaningful results in client decarbonization to meet ING's 2030 targets, and when does client engagement give way to stricter financing conditions?
Yeah. I come back to, let's say, the client plans that I was talking about, that we have a good baseline, that we have the same understanding of what we're talking about rather than talking cross purposes. That means we can have a clear conversation year by year. We start with this one or two years ago, so every year the conversation becomes clearer, and that may lead to setting conditions, but that's then an idiosyncratic discussion rather than then it's always this or it's always that, because it depends on the specific circumstances. A question on AT1. What is it?
Planting trees.
Oh, planting trees. Yeah. We have nothing against. No, we don't need-
No, do sit down please.
No.
I want to really close this session.
You were very clear. On planting trees, we have nothing against planting trees, but we do not use it as a methodology to offset our emissions because we believe that the current methodology is not sufficiently robust, and in simple terms, sometimes it is being tampered with, my words, not anybody else's, and therefore unclear whether the planting of trees or forest is sufficiently offsetting, whether double counting is involved or not, and when exactly that may be happening. We do not use that methodology to offset. Other than that, I have nothing against planting trees. I think it's good.
In terms of looking at the composition of staff or that we can work with others to get others a job in ING, including elderly, yeah, I think we always look at skill sets that we can use for our operations, whether it is in contact with clients or our digitalization efforts or the broadening. I think there's a lot of new exciting types of jobs despite the risks on AI and cyber that are coming on stream. For us as a bank, we have been growing our activities across the globe for the past many years, and that also means that in some areas there is job creation, in some areas there is job consolidation.
We will keep looking at these skill sets for all kinds of people in the society, not only by the way, in the Netherlands, but also elsewhere, and also for different age groups. I think that was the last one.
Yeah. As I said earlier, that this was the last round of questions, so the last two. Yes, I know, but you came after that.
energy carrier.
Yeah, this is.
Yeah, you're right, actually. You certainly need energy carriers. I think you have to remind me. The question was when will you stop financing energy carriers or?
Well, the energy carriers, his question was they're active until 1967.
Oh, 1967.
We'll all be long dead, buried by then.
All right.
Why are we financing them? That was his question.
All right.
Roughly.
Roughly. Alright. That's good enough. The carriers. This is about shipping again. This is about the trade in it. The question is, how do we develop standards in the trade environment, how to deal with that? Those areas are still under development. How to best do that? We're looking at how to expand that. Like I also said to the lady a bit earlier on microphone five who talked about the landmines. That is an area we continue to develop in. Clearly, and maybe that goes wider than the LNG carriers. It was also mentioned on that side of the room, is that okay? There are areas in which we as a world may or may not meet the targets for 1.5 degrees that we have set for ourselves.
As a matter of fact, we're currently already getting quite close to 1.5 degrees. That means how do we then react as a world to the growing tension on climate? On carriers we do assess the transition risk per transaction. We do that also for carriers.
To number six. I'm really sorry. I've closed the session. Do you have any burning question you need to ask? Please ask, because I'd like to close the session.
[Foreign language]
Thank you. Noted. Steven, do you want to say it was more?
I know that our Chair is urging to answer this himself, because he used to be the CRO of UniCredit, but I will take it. I'm not denying that we're in a geopolitically sensitive environment. You see that because GDP forecasts are going down and inflation forecasts are going up. All kinds of mineral costs are going up as well. There's terrible wars going on. That's all clear. We have set ourselves a long-term target that we already set quite a number of years ago, where our target setting for our CET1 ratio had to be, which is around the 13%. Initially, by the way, it was around 12.5%, but we moved it last year up from around 12.5%-13%. We did that based on stress testing, because what you currently see in the world is one stress scenario.
We make many stress scenarios with extreme stresses that are on different parameters to see what would that do to the capital of the bank? Based on those stress scenarios and the impact that it would have on the continuity of our bank, we do set a buffer between what is required, the supervisors require based on Basel legislation, and what we do on top of it to, based on the stress scenario, still have sufficient capital. That is what we do. What we're experiencing now in the world is a type of a stress scenario. Let me tell you that we use stress scenarios that are much graver than the one that we see, at least so far, to see what does it do to our capital. On that we base the buffer level. That's what we have done this time as well.
That's why we do that long term, not from we move from one scenario to the other. Otherwise, we need to flip-flop with our capital all the way, and that's what we do not want. We want to keep a relatively straight direction, if you will.
Thank you, Steven. We close this session. There's one question online which has come in about KPMG. I will reserve that for after your presentation, Peti. We can take it on at that point. With this session, that closes this. Over to you, Vroukje.
Thank you, Chairman. I'd like to bring to everybody's attention that the percentage of the representatives' capital will now be displayed on screen. Yes, there it is. I will also briefly explain to you how you can vote on your own devices. For each voting item, the voting platform displays the options for, against, or abstain. To vote, select one of these three options. You can vote on all agenda items during the time the voting is open. After voting on a voting item, the display will highlight your selected option, and if you want to change your vote, you can do so until the voting is closed at the very end of this meeting, which will be after agenda item 10. Please notify our staff if you need assistance or encounter any difficulties.
You can now vote on item 2D, but as I said, voting is also open for all the other items on the agenda that are open for a vote, and the results will be presented after the last agenda item has been dealt with. Thank you.
Thank you, Vroukje. I propose we now proceed to the next agenda item, which is the adoption of the financial statements for 2025. We have discussed the financial results of 2025 and related questions. Therefore, I would now like to ask Mr. de Wit of KPMG, our independent auditor, to make a few comments.
Before we continue, I would like to ask attention for Néstor Iván Martínez, who's a Social Activist from Colombia.
I think.
Who was murdered in 2016 before destroying the environment. I think ING, you should back away from these companies that are responsible for human rights violations, responsible for killing and disappearing 1,000s and chasing 1,000s of people opposing gold mining in Colombia and other countries.
The first thing I would like to say is that I'm sorry about.
Shareholders-
If you keep shouting, I will ask my colleagues to remove you from the room. I am sorry about what you've been through, and I-
It is very hard to believe.
Yes.
The bullshit that's being said here. Thank you for your considerations.
You may leave the room. I am not prepared to take your abuse.
Néstor Iván Martínez.
I don't care who you are. You will either speak respectfully or you will leave the room.
Colombia. Say his name, Néstor Martínez. Néstor Iván Martínez, and with him, thousands of other victims from gold mining in Colombia. ING, shame on you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are still in the Netherlands. I would like to give the word to KPMG.
ING, shame on you.
You had your chance to say whatever you want to say. Now you're disrupting the proceedings. Could I ask my colleagues to intervene, please?
My parents.
Else. Okay, Peti, can I give you the word, please?
Good afternoon.
15 years at the West Bank. ING, stop providing financial services to Israeli companies.
We are not in the West Bank, madam. Please move on.
ING-
Good afternoon. My name is Peti de Wit, and on behalf of KPMG, I'm the external auditor of ING. I will be covering the following 4 topics today. First, the conclusion of our audit work. Second, the audit process. Third, the audit findings for 2025. Finally, I will say a few words about audit transition. Before I present on the work that we performed, let me start with the outcome of our work first. Over 2025, we issued in total 5 audit opinions or opinions. First, we audited the 2025 financial statements of ING Groep, and we issued an unqualified audit opinion on these financial statements on the 23rd of February 2026, which you can find on page 334 of the annual report. An unqualified audit opinion means three things.
First, the financial statements present a true and fair view of the balance sheet at 31 December 2025, and the profit for the year 2025. Second, the financial statements are prepared in accordance with IFRS as adopted in the European Union and Title IX of Book Two of the Dutch Civil Code. Thirdly, management's report and disclosure is consistent with the financial statements and does not contain material misstatements. In addition, the report and disclosures contain all information required by Dutch law. Second, at the request of the supervisory board, we also performed a voluntary limited assurance engagement on ING's sustainability statement. We issued an unqualified limited assurance report, which you can find on page 343 of the annual report. We also performed limited assurance procedures over so-called selected non-financial indicators as included and defined in the 2025 annual report. That assurance report can be found on page 346.
Because of ING's listing in the United States, we also performed an audit of the 2025 financial statements filed on Form 20-F with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Related thereto, we also performed an audit on the effectiveness of ING's internal controls over financial reporting as of the 31st of December 2025. Both audits resulted in unqualified audit opinions. Since you will be voting on the Dutch financial statement for 2025, my presentation focuses on our audit thereof. We follow the circle. Our objective is to plan and perform the audit engagement in a manner that allows us to obtain sufficient and appropriate audit evidence for our opinion. We performed our audit with a reasonable, but not absolute, level of assurance, meaning we may not detect all material errors and fraud during our audit. We apply materiality in performing our audit procedures.
We consider something material if the size of a misstatement is such that it is likely to affect you as users of the financial statements. In 2025, we applied a materiality of EUR 350 million for ING, and this level of materiality was the same as we applied in the 2024 audit. It equals 3.8% of profit before tax, which we consider the most appropriate benchmark for materiality setting. We reported audit misstatements above EUR 17.5 million to management and the supervisory board. We go to the group audit. Given the size, complexity, and international profile of ING, we have directed the audit of ING out of Amsterdam. KPMG is not only the external auditor of ING here in the Netherlands, we're the external auditor in every country in scope of the ING Groep audit. We conduct our audit based on risk assessment.
We focus on those areas which have the biggest risk or potential for a material misstatement in the financial statements. Usually, these are larger account balances or larger amounts and/or areas that require management estimates or judgment. For efficiency reasons, we decide which audit procedures should be performed centrally at the group level, and which should be performed locally in the countries. Audit procedures regarding certain elements of expected credit loss, provisioning, and IT were performed centrally. We make use of local auditors for the audits of 23 so-called components in 16 countries. We requested them to perform audit procedures for our group audit purposes. These component auditors work under strict group instructions. We assess their independence, their competencies as auditors, and have contact with them frequently to discuss our collective risk assessment and progress of their work.
Finally, we review their group auditors reporting to us, and for a selection of countries, we inspected the local audit files. In the audit of ING, we encounter various areas of complexity and judgment, and we make use of specialists in risk assessment and the execution of our procedures. Like in previous years, the IT auditors and the credit risk specialists had the most significant contribution to our audit work. On communication, we communicated progress and findings of our audit procedures with management and the audit committee at various moments throughout the year. We attended all meetings of the audit committee and all meetings of the risk committee of the supervisory board. These meetings facilitate our understanding of risk for the audit, and we discussed our risk assessment, planning, approach, and findings from our audit. Well, I was about to say something else about communication.
We presented our final report to the Supervisory Board by means of our Auditor's Report. Let's move on to the audit findings for 2025 to give you a flavour for this year. Key Audit Matters is the first topic. Based on the execution of our work, we identified two Key Audit Matters. Key Audit Matters are those matters that, in our professional judgment, are of most significance in our audit of the financial statements. They are linked to areas that require significant management judgment or that are inherently complex and therefore pose risk to the reliability for financial reporting. The first Key Audit Matter concerns expected credit losses.
Due to the significant and complex auditor judgment required to evaluate the estimation uncertainty related to the determination of expected credit losses, or in more simple words, the loan loss provision, this topic qualified again as a key audit matter in our audit of the 2025 financials. The determination of expected credit losses requires significant management judgment and is based on estimations related to, among others, probability of default, loss given default, forward-looking macroeconomic forecasts, the trigger for a significant increase in credit risk, and the assessment of management overlays. Based on the work performed, as described in our long-form auditor's report, we concluded that the valuation of loans and advances to customers and to banks is within a reasonable range and adequately disclosed in the financial statements. Our second key audit matter concerns user access and change management.
ING is highly dependent on its IT environment for the continuity of operations and for the reliability of financial reporting. In our audit work, we involve IT specialists in all stages of the audit, in our planning and risk assessment, in testing internal controls, and in our evaluation of the effectiveness of such, and the implications for our financial statements audit. Our test work resulted in the identification of control deficiencies and improvement areas in the IT control framework, in particular related to high-privileged user access and monitoring, including access to modify configurations, deploy code, or change data. These deficiencies were similar in nature to last year, but due to management's progress in remediation, less severe compared to 2024.
On estimates, we inspected the reasonableness of the significant judgments in critical accounting estimates and assessed if these were influenced by the executive board by performing, for example, retrospective testing on previous year estimates. Based on the applicable reporting framework, we consider management's estimates to be fair and balanced. On internal controls, management summarized its view of the internal control environment on page 87 of the annual report. This was also item 2C. Based on our knowledge and understanding obtained through our audit, we concluded that this information was consistent with the financial statements and not materially misstated. On other topics, a word about cyber risk. Management reports on pages 153- 155 of the annual report about the top and emerging risks, including cyber. In our audit, we assessed the risk of material misstatements resulting from cyber.
We did not identify any incidents that impacted our risk assessment, and therefore, we did not change our audit approach. A word about ING Russia. As part of our audit, we considered management's intention to dispose of ING Bank Eurasia JSC, or in other words, ING Russia. Our work resulted in a conclusion that the disposal of ING Russia is uncertain and depending on various regulatory approvals. We concur with the regular consolidation of ING Russia into ING's 2025 consolidated financial statements. We inspected note 32 on page 275 of the annual report that is directed to this topic, and we have no specific findings to bring to your attention. As discussed before, we note that after the completion of our audit, ING issued a press release on the termination of the sales agreement for the Russian business.
On climate-related risk, ING's executive board considered the impact of climate-related risks on the financial statements. We performed procedures to understand and assess management's process, and we involved our climate risk specialists in our work. We consider both transition and physical risks, and we focused on the relationship with management's judgment in relation to expected credit losses. This included model risk management and the risk of stranded assets on the valuation of collateral. We also considered the insights obtained from our assurance work over ING's sustainability statement. For example, on the reported so-called current-year financial effects from climate change, and note that they were not material to the financial statements. We concur with management's conclusion that climate-related risks did not have a material impact on the 2025 financial statements.
On fraud risk and non-compliance with laws and regulations, our work related to these topics did not result in significant findings. I come to the final and fourth topic, audit transition. KPMG has been the external auditor of ING since the financial year 2016. The 2025 audit marks the last year of our 10-year mandate, which is the maximum under Dutch law. On behalf of my team in the Netherlands and all other countries that ING is operating in, I would like to say thank you for your trust in us. It has been a pleasure to work with management and the supervisory board, and it has also been a privilege to address you annually in this meeting.
Finally, I would like to inform you that we have worked well with Remy Maerschalk and his Deloitte audit team to hand over our audit mandate and help them settle in and prepare for the audit of 2026. In closing, dear shareholders, I hope that my presentation provides you with additional insights into the work that underpins our audit opinion in the 2025 annual report. Thank you for your attention. Carl.
In the first instance, I would like to thank KPMG for the years dedicated to ING, for all the work that you have done, the constructive but robust challenges over the years, and the manner in which you have done. Thank you very much on behalf of both boards and on behalf of ING. I do have a question here from Sarasin, the fund management outfit. I'll read out the question to you. It's for you. It says: Related to the audit of 2025 statements, what evidence can you provide that you... Please sit down. I'll come to the questions. What evidence can you provide that you evaluated and challenged management's assumption that climate is, I think they mean climate risk, is immaterial, in short and in the medium-term? We've just heard that two-thirds of the wholesale bank has maturities less than two years.
What about ING's mortgage lending book, where maturities are much longer and represent a material share of the banking book? Dutch mortgages, bad news, is it, Peti?
Everything in our audit on expected credit losses as presented in financial statements is subject to challenges. That goes from testing work around the accuracy and the completeness of data that goes into all the calculations. We do a lot of work around the appropriateness of the models, including how management's governance over risk models is. We do a lot of work around assumption setting that is crucial for these judgmental areas. Of course, in those challenges, our credit and climate risk specialists bring in data that we take from the outside world and the experience that they bring in from using with other banks. That in total makes us comfortable with the statements that management has made in the financial statements.
Again, in IFRS 9, this is about best estimate, and this is about the maturity of the loans, let's say in scope of our work. We consider in that, against that maturity of the loan portfolio, both physical risk and transition risks also related to mortgages. Overall, we have come to the conclusion that management's statements in the financial statements are supportable, and we concurred with the conclusions.
Thank you. I'll give the word to Mr. Vreeken on microphone two.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Thank you. We'll take the questions in a round. I would like to break that in two parts, because one is accounting related, the other one is sponsorship related. The financial statement that I will hand to you. The sponsorship related, I'll hand it over to Steven. As to your wish that we win the World Cup: absolutely, no doubt. Whether that's a reality, I do not know. We'll come back to your question. I would like to go to the lady on four. It seems she has a pressing question. Is it related to our accountant, please?
[Foreign language]
Okay. Back to two again, to VEB.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language] Thank you. I'll give the word to Peti and then to Steven with the questions related to management on sponsorship. You had a second round of questions related to that. You had a question for-
I think we were left with Mr. Steven van Rijswijk. I don't audit whether The Netherlands is going to be the next world champion. I can also confirm that the sponsorships are not material expenses from a financial statements perspective. On cyber, I think I already mentioned it. We engage our specialists on the topic in how we interact with the bank in obtaining an understanding of how it's monitoring and managing responses to cyber risk. In the course of 2025, we have not become aware of any incidents that require a change in our audit response. That is on cyber. Of course, we are aware, and this is part of the ongoing journey for the bank and for our colleagues of Deloitte, that the topic of resilience, including resilience for cyber risk, is a top priority for the bank.
That is why it was also mentioned in the topic in the emerging risk section in the risk management part of the annual report. On Milieudefensie. Thank you for your question. We perform detailed test work on the disclosures that you find in the financial statements. We also perform detailed work on the sustainability statement. Although the level of depth of our procedures is not similar, because we have limited assurance work versus the financial statements at reasonable assurance. We perform spot checks on the data that flows into these disclosures and test whether the individual clients that are financed are categorized in the appropriate categories in line with the disclosures that management provides around these tables that give you guidance on what is included and what is not, including the linkage in scope of Terra and how it reconciles to the information in the financial statements.
We are comfortable with these disclosures.
[Foreign language] Sorry. [Foreign language]
Next on my list was the floor for Steven.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Before I give the word to Steven, I think it's important to stress that the FOR from the government for the Dutch corporate industrial landscape is a game changer, because it's very different. For financial institutions such as ourselves, I would argue that the risk management systems are far more robust and solid. It has to be, because at our heart and our core, the commodity we deal with is risk. With those words, I'm going to hand it to Steven, who is also a former CRO. He can tell you.
An accountant.
Sure, that's two.
Yeah. On the planting of trees, look, for clarity, I'm not against planting of trees. I'm for it. I just said that we do not use it as a measurement to offset our own emissions, because that is a methodology we find difficult to use. On our sponsorships, look, the way we manage our sponsorships and all marketing efforts in that regard in terms of is how do we create visibility and awareness, how we are making sure that we're differentiating ourselves to others, and how do we get people to be salient around ING, which means there is a propensity to buy our products or services. Those are three vectors, if you will, that we look at our marketing efforts by. Sponsorships also, in that regard, are more above the line, are about awareness. We focus very much on our positioning around sports and music.
There are also a couple of national icons, and the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw are two of those. We find them to be very important part of culture in this society. We are a big company in this society, and therefore we find important to sponsor these big icons, and we will continue to do so. Of course, we hope that the Netherlands wins the World Cup, blah, blah. No, we do. Although we also sponsor Belgium, but still.
Don't make it too difficult.
No.
Let's move to four.
Q4, yeah. Did we really change our assessment? Well, look, we do continuously, Mr. Everts, manage and monitor the risks throughout the year as a board, and there is already structured reporting to senior management and the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board. Well, to Supervisory Board at least quarterly, and to the Management Board more often, and some elements even monthly, whereby we get different dashboards on non-financial risk areas, whereby we see to what extent are we in line with appetite, and what do we need to improve, and what is the learning cycle? Do we need to update our policy? That's what we already monitor.
What we now also do is that we have an additional year-end evaluation performed by relevant senior risk managers on all of those points based on the management information used throughout the year as to get to a final verdict, if you will, a final view on the integrated view for the financial year. I think it's more a wrapper. Sort of a wrap-up what we're using to come to a final conclusion than anything else, because many of the procedures and the measurements that we now use were already in place. It's more the conclusion of it to come to, let's say, the in-control statement in and of itself. The in-control statement in the end means that we believe that we are effective, and that is what we stand by.
You called a different word, I believe, adequate, but let's just stick with effective because that's the word being used by the four.
Okay. Thank you very much. I'd like to close this session.
Oh, Peti was not ready, apparently.
Oh, Peti.
I wanted to get back to your question on user access management. I already mentioned that our findings in the 2025 audit were similar in nature, but less severe compared to 2024. I can confirm that we were able to continue to apply a controls-based audit approach. It has also to do with a testing of controls during the year, and then testing compensating controls later in the year. It is not, let's say, first time right. The other thing that we observe and that we also discuss with management is, ING is going through continuous change in the IT domain. You heard about scalable tech is one of the driving forces. In those pockets of change, we observe relatively more controlled efficiencies. The preparation in those pockets of the bank that go through more, let's say, relevant change.
How do you make sure from a controls perspective, including the evidencing of the effectiveness of controls, that everything is first time right? That was the core of our discussion this year. Thank you.
Peti, I'd like to now close the session and move to the next item on the agenda, which is item three. This relates to dividend and dividend distribution policy and dividend for 2025.
Yeah, the final.
The final dividend for 2024.
Yeah, that's a typo. Should be 2025.
Year 2025. Yeah. Item 3A and 3B both relate to the dividend distribution of the discussion together. I refer to the annual report for the explanation of the dividend and the distribution policy and details on the proposed dividend for 2025. It is proposed to adopt the total dividend for 2025 at EUR 1.086 per ordinary share. After the interim dividend of EUR 0.35 per share paid in August 2025, a final dividend of EUR 0.63 per share will be paid in cash. We'll now move to if there are any questions on this topic on the agenda. Seeing none, I would like to give the word to Vroukje. Is there anything to add at this stage, Vroukje?
No, I think we can go to.
We move to item four.
25.
This involves the discharge of the members of the Executive Board in respect to the duties performed during the year 2025. It's a voting item. Discharge of the members of the Supervisory Board in respect to their duties performed during the year 2025. Discharge is the term used to release an Executive or Supervisory Director from liability in respect of his or her duties performed during the year. The discharge relates exclusively to the actions of the Executive and Supervisory Board members that are evident from the financial statements and the annual report, and about which the shareholders have otherwise been informed during the meeting. We propose that both Executive Board members and Supervisory Board members be discharged for their duties over 2025. Are there any questions in the room? If not, then I would like to move to item number five.
This is about the remuneration policy of the Executive Board, voting item, and remuneration policy of the Supervisory Board, voting item. For the specific proposed changes, I refer to the explanatory notes to the agenda and the remuneration policies as available on the website of ING Groep. According to the Dutch Civil Code, the remuneration policy must be submitted to the Annual General Meeting for approval. The adoption of the remuneration policy requires a majority vote of 75%. Once adopted, the policies will take effect retroactively as of January 1st, 2026. I'm pleased to give the floor to Ms. Herna Verhagen, Chairwoman of the Remuneration Committee, for an explanation of the proposed updated policies.
Thank you, Carl. As announced during last year's AGM, during 2025, the Supervisory Board conducted extensive reviews of both policies for the Executive Board and Supervisory Board on remuneration levels. Over the past years, ING has been very successful based on our brand, our digital DNA, our entrepreneurial culture, a good employee engagement, and of course, strong results. To enable ING to remain successful and achieve further growth, we need to remain an attractive employer at all levels of our company, including in our leadership. Remuneration is an important element in retaining, attracting, and stimulating talented leaders. We have undertaken an extensive benchmarking review, which showed that the compensation of both the Executive Board and Supervisory Board is well below market level, and that this gap has widened in the recent years. This gap to market creates challenges, specifically concerning succession planning and quality and diversity in the Board's composition.
These factors reinforce the need to act now, applying, of course, a balanced approach to ensure long-term competitiveness and success.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Mr. Frijkens. Four.
[Foreign language]
Thank you. Yes, it's linked, it's capped. I will give the word to Herna.
I think the factual remuneration of the CEO and the other members of the executive board, including the factual remuneration of the supervisory board, is in the remuneration report. There you find all the overviews you asked for, Mr. Frijkens. To compare us with individual companies is not the way we compare. We compare with our peer group. Exactly the same answer in the remuneration report, you find an overview of how the remuneration of the executive board and of the supervisory board, how that relates and compares to that of the executive boards and supervisory boards of the other companies we compare with. If you want to have the exact pages, it's on page 65 of the annual report. There you find the overview of the remuneration of the executive board. On page 68, you find the benchmarks.
If you want to have an overview of the Supervisory Board, you have to go to the end of the Remuneration Report, and there you can find exactly what we are earning at this moment in time. That's on page 83. Back to the questions on the variable remuneration. Variable remuneration within ING is fully depending on what is reached. Those goals are set at the beginning of the year. At the beginning of 2026, we did set the goals for this year. Those are challenging and reachable. What we did do is, of course, we gave an exact overview, again in the Remuneration Report, of how we divided the percentages over the several targets. 50% of those targets are financial, 50% are non-financial, and part of non-financial is indeed ESG. Next to, of course, risk and regulatory, next to social, next to customers.
What we try to do as a supervisory board in discussion with the executive board is to find challenging targets and to make those targets not only challenging, but also able to reach them for the executive board as well as for the organization. That's always a very fine balance you have to strike.
[Foreign language]
I think that's your conclusion of our remuneration policy. That would not be my summary of what I just said.
Seeing no other questions in the room, I would close the session. I'd like to move to item 6. That is variable remuneration cap for selected global staff. It's separate from the board. In this item, I refer to the explanation of this agenda item in the notice of the meeting. Approval for a variable remuneration cap of 100%-200% for select ING staff was last given by the annual general meeting in 2021 for a period of five years. Applicable from 2022 until 2026. This has now lapsed, so we therefore propose to renew the authority for the subsequent five years' performance from 2027- 2031. I'd like to open it up for questions in the room. If I see none, then I would like to move to seven, composition of the executive board, specifically, the appointment of Ms. Ida Lerner. This is a voting item.
It is agenda item number seven in the agenda, the composition of the Executive Board. Before we continue with the proposal appointment of Ida Lerner, I would again like to remind you that the voting is now open for all agenda items and be closed after agenda 10. With, as a bit of a context, with Tanate Phutrakul stepping down, Ida Lerner is nominated for appointment to the Executive Board as she brings extensive experience as Chief Financial Officer of a large publicly listed banking institution. Her financial expertise and proven track record in leadership, capital management, and regulatory oversight within a complex European banking environment is expected to make a significant contribution to the company's continued execution of its strategy.
The Supervisory Board considers Ida Lerner's deep knowledge of European banking, combined with her expertise in supporting strategic transformation, to be highly relevant to ING's ambition to further strengthen its position as a digital and a sustainable bank. Are there any questions related to this? Seeing none. There is. Microphone two, please.
[Foreign language]
I think I'll take the question. I think in terms of she will be able to. I think the proof is always in the pudding. I think next year you should be able to ask that question and then see the response you get. I think from our perspective and the Supervisory Board, we're delighted to have found Ida. We believe that there are multiple different factors as you understand and know that are taken into account. The first is. Is she good at what she does? Can she be a really good CFO? We are a complex, big company. There are many things. Can she do that properly? The technical capabilities. The second element that we take into account is. How does she deal and manage with the various stakeholders, the shareholders, and others that she has to engage with?
The third element is maybe even more important: how does she fit within the team and what does she bring to the mix of the managing board and how she deals with. What she brings is a multiple different, which only strengthens the mix, the combined output. The question then comes back to: do we believe that she shares that ambition to be the best house in Europe? The answer to that is yes. It's multiple different factors. We are absolutely delighted that we were able to find her. Denay we will certainly miss. I think if not for anything else than the fact that he's always wise and always measured. This is not for the minutes and the notes, please. There is a reason why I sometimes call him the Buddha. Because he is unruffled. Thank you Denay for that and for being with us through those years.
This is about Ida. We are very much looking forward to working with her. Steven, if you want to add something.
I couldn't have said it better. I think that you can also take comfort in the fact that Ida has been a long-standing employee of also a very good large international bank where she has been a CFO, very much appreciated by the investor community. We've spoken to a number of them who applaud our appointment of Ida. I've already experienced firsthand in the past weeks that she fits very well in the team. I'm delighted and very happy.
Many thanks for the explanation. I'll do this in English because this will fly better, I think. Mr. Guha, you have a tendency to have nicknames. We have the boss. We have the Buddha. I really hope she's not the bully, but we'll see what nickname will come up next year.
No, she is absolutely not the bully. We are absolutely delighted. What I will say is that she has chosen for a slightly warmer climate to move a bit further south. We've assured her that karnemelk has not put her off. I suspect you want to say something.
[Foreign language]
I think the process in itself. You will have every chance to meet her. She's there right in front of you. Maybe she can stand up so the whole room can see who she is. We're absolutely delighted. You will see her next year, and you will see him next year as well. You can ask all the different questions. Thank you very much on that note.
[Foreign language]
Noted. Thank you. If there are no other further questions, I'd like to move to item 8A, 8B, 9, and 10. This is about the authorization of the Executive Board to issue ordinary shares. Authorization of the Executive Board to issue ordinary shares with or without preemptive rights of existing shareholders. It's a voting item as the previous one as well. Nine is authorization of the Executive Board to acquire ordinary shares in ING Groep's own capital, voting item. 10, reduction of the issued share capital by canceling ordinary shares acquired by the ING Groep pursuant to the authority under agenda item nine, also a voting item. In effect, if I may, I'd like to draw your attention to all of the items listed, 8A, 8B, 9, and 10. I would like to cluster them together and give you the interpretation from our end of it.
Under agenda item 8A, it is proposed to extend the executive board's authority to issue new shares and to grant rights to subscribe for shares for 18 months as of today, with a maximum of 40% of the issued share capital on a preemptive basis. Under agenda item 8B, it is proposed to extend the executive board's authority to issue new shares and to grant rights to subscribe for shares for 18 months as of today, with a maximum of 10% of the issued share capital, with or without pre-emptive rights of existing shareholders. These proposals allow ING to manage its capital and to respond adequately to developments in the financial markets as required by the circumstances. At the same time, as much consideration as possible is given to the interest of shareholders to prevent the dilution of their shareholding.
Agenda item number nine relates to the authorization of the executive board with the approval of the supervisory board to acquire fully paid-up ordinary shares in ING. The number of shares that can be acquired in this way and the acquisition price are subject to restrictions. This authorization can be used for any purpose, including for share buyback programs. Agenda item number 10 anticipates future share buyback programs and enables ING's group to cancel shares in its own capital that has been purchased by ING in a future share buyback program without requiring a separate resolution by the general meeting. The precise wording of these resolutions can be found in the agenda and the explanatory notes. I would like to turn to questions about the agenda items 8A and 8B, 9, and 10. In the meantime, would like to remind you that voting is already open for these items.
Item 10 is also the last voting item on the agenda before we turn to the voting results. Any questions in the room? If not, I'm going to hand it over to Ms. Van Oosten Slingeland. Number two. There's a question.
[Foreign language]
Thank you.
Dat is waar een bedrijf voor is.
Thank you for the encouragement. We'll keep at it. Van Oosten Slingeland, if I may now give you the word.
Yes. With that, I'd like to announce that the vote on all agenda items is closed. Thank you very much.
The results, I think you have.
Yeah. I can announce the results. For agenda items two through four, they will be displayed shortly. There they are. I see that all these proposals are adopted. I suggest we move to the next items, five through seven, which will also be displayed, are displayed as you can see. I also conclude that all proposals have been adopted. Moving to items eight through ten, which are now displayed, and also these items are all adopted.
Thank you, Blauwkamp. All proposals are then adopted today, and thank you very much for your support. This was the last agenda item. I wish you a wonderful evening. I understand it is sunny outside, so hopefully we can all enjoy it. The final results of the voting, as you know, will be posted on our website in a few days. The draft recording of the meeting will be posted three months after the meeting and the official record of the meeting six months after the meeting on ING's website. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes ING's 2026 Annual General Meeting. On behalf of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board, I'd like to thank you very much for your continued support and for active participation. On that note, I want to wish you a good evening and a wonderful evening. Thank you very much.