What you create is intellectual property. An idea that sprung from your mind which you turned into codes or models.

How long have you been working at ING Belgium?

I started my career at ING Belgium as an external consultant about six years ago. I moved from India for the job which initially was only going to be for about four months. But I got to know the colleagues and local culture very well and I knew fairly soon I would never want to leave and saw myself building a life here.

I simply loved the job and the company culture. So when I found the opportunity to become “ING orange”, I didn’t give it a second thought. It came organically. It was the perfect match. Today I am an Operations Engineer for an application serving the ING digital channels for the product direct debits (think of Spotify or electricity monthly debits from your account).

What do you like about the environment you work in?

In a way, it's like a startup backed by a large international organisation. You get to experiment a lot, work with new and best in market technology, and learn from people from all over the world. It’s an environment where you can really increase your knowledge as well as innovate.

I also appreciate the recognition you get for what you do. Take the IP Reward for example. It’s a government initiative to stimulate digital innovation and ING jumped to the occasion. Because of it, people who are scripting, designing or coding can get a reward for their creative work.

How does it work?

Basically, what you create is recognized as intellectual property. As an idea that sprung from your mind, which you then turned into codes, scripts or models. You can compare it with copyright for authors. If your work meets the criteria, a portion of your income is then taxed at a lower rate.

The idea is to boost our position as the number one digital bank. So far 700 people at ING received IP rewards. I am rewarded for the creative solutions I come up with- in pipelines to deploy, scripts to maintain the application, incidents to solve  for our service running in the private cloud. It allows our application that is used by the ING digital channels to run faster. It’s a bit technical, I know …

LinkedIn says you’re also a Lioness Board Member.

I’m glad I updated my profile then because I’m very passionate about it. It’s an ING employee network that focuses on gender equality. When I moved to Belgium I was surprised to see that there are fewer women in technology over here. And we have a lot of talented women we want to help progress.

If you ask me, we simply need more role models, people to look up to. That’s why we invite keynote speakers to events and workshops. We also are building a community that wants to move the needle with a desire to work for a gender equal company. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not just about women.  We need diversity, equity and inclusion of all.