ING’s AI Roadmap: Platform, People, and Agentic AI

Why It Matters

ING's unified AI platform and workforce upskilling promise faster, safer customer services and cost efficiencies, setting a benchmark for responsible AI adoption in banking.

Key Takeaways

• Scale agentic AI in contact centers, KYC, retail interactions.
• Build single global AI platform serving all countries and domains.
• Centralize agents and technology for scalable, safe, responsible AI.
• Launch data fluency program to teach AI prompting and critical use.
• Equip leaders with skills to operate in AI‑driven environment.

Summary

ING outlined a three‑pronged AI roadmap aimed at rapidly scaling agentic AI across its core business lines—contact‑center operations, know‑your‑customer (KYC) processes, and retail customer interactions. The bank plans to embed advanced AI models that can autonomously handle routine tasks while delivering personalized experiences, positioning AI as a paradigm‑shifting capability.

A central pillar of the strategy is a unified, globally accessible AI platform that consolidates all agents, models, and supporting technology. By housing safety controls, governance, and responsible‑AI frameworks in one place, ING seeks to ensure consistent compliance across jurisdictions while achieving economies of scale. The platform will serve every country and business domain, simplifying deployment and maintenance.

To operationalize the technology, ING is rolling out a data‑fluency program that trains staff on effective prompting, result validation, and critical thinking when using AI outputs. Leadership development will focus on navigating an AI‑driven environment, ensuring executives can steer strategy and risk management. The initiative emphasizes both technical adoption and cultural change.

If executed, the roadmap could deliver faster customer service, reduced fraud, and lower operational costs, while mitigating AI‑related risks through centralized oversight. Upskilling employees ensures the workforce can leverage AI responsibly, giving ING a competitive edge in a rapidly digitizing banking sector.

Original Description

Marco Li Mandri sets out ING’s three-part AI plan for the next two to three years: move fast, scale responsibly, and make sure people can actually use the tools. The goal isn’t scattered pilots, but AI becoming part of everyday work in a few big-impact areas, backed by the right controls and skills.

First, Li Mandri says ING wants to rapidly scale AI and agentic AI in focus domains like the contact centre and wider customer service. Practically, that means changing how customers get help and how staff deliver it, not just answering FAQs, but summarising issues, suggesting next steps, pulling relevant information quickly, and routing cases while also flagging retail customer interaction, where AI could smooth high-volume journeys like onboarding, product questions, payments, disputes, and fraud, making experiences more personalised and proactive.

ING also describes building one global platform to serve all countries and domains, concentrating ING’s agents and technology in a shared foundation which supports faster reuse across teams and makes the essentials easier to standardise: model onboarding, monitoring, auditability, data access, and change management. It also strengthens safety and responsibility through consistent guardrails, clearer accountability, and tighter control over data access and output monitoring which is critical in a regulated, high-stakes environment.

Lastly, Li Mandri focuses on people as leaders need to learn how to operate in an AI-driven world, including realistic capabilities, risks, and how work changes when humans and AI share tasks. Colleagues need practical skills too: prompting well, judging output quality, and staying critical. ING’s data fluency programme is meant to build these habits across the organisation, reinforcing that AI strategy is as much about people and governance as it is about models and platforms.