The best of both worlds: FinTech meets direct bank

In the spring of 2020, ING and Lendico were ready to toast their partnership – even if only virtually. By March 2020, the IT side had completed the full integration of Lendico into ING's systems. For the target group of small and medium-sized companies that want to cover their capital requirements in a simple way, nothing changed: they continued to enjoy straightforward processes, credit decisions within 48 hours, a fully digital user experience and much more. Ahead of the launch, there was a real tour de force of software engineers and architects at play. As Jaroslaw, ING IT Area Lead Tribe Business Banking, puts it: “To integrate a FinTech into the IT of a bank – that made us pioneers not only at ING Germany, but also in the global ING Group and probably also within the entire industry.”

The best of both worlds

The challenge was to connect the IT systems of two companies into a uniform platform. This required combining the best of both worlds while creating added value for customers at the same time. Specifically, this was about creating synergies between the mentality of a digital startup with great customer focus, and the banking know-how of an established financial services provider.

An adventure for software engineers

Lendico offers its customers a seamless user experience. But under the digital hood, the infrastructures of various units had to be integrated. The new architecture had to be lean and the Lendico technology had to be largely retained in order to shorten the “time to market”. How did the developers approach this? IT-Lead Jaroslaw explains: “To implement this, we connected the Lendico and ING platforms using the global ING ‘touchpoint’ target architecture and banking APIs”. The cloud-based Lendico site was wired to ING's payment and booking systems via microservices and APIs. This was complemented by a brand-new core banking system hosted in the ING Private Cloud. During development, the demanding banking context always had to be taken into account, for example in terms of security and auditability. Jaroslaw sums up: “We had to lay many new foundations, especially with regard to the integration of the touchpoint components. Sometimes this was a real engineering adventure!” In any case, it was a true challenge for the full-stack developers that could only be mastered through teamwork on both sides.

Platform for growth

The choice of a lean architecture and the API approach had another purpose besides efficiency: openness. The new system follows the future-oriented ecosystem idea: cooperation opens the system to new business areas and customers. As a result, the service can also be offered on partner platforms. Customer focus is the motto – which the flexibility of the API connection makes possible. But the IT staff of both teams still has quite a lot to do.

Coding in the “trunk”: How to be agile

How were the developers able to complete the complex project so quickly? The key was agile work in which hierarchies take a back seat and personal responsibility is given a lot of room. ING's corporate philosophy is all about empowerment – not only of customers, but also of employees. This promotes initiative and creativity, creates satisfaction and improves the result. Modern tools and methods were applied wherever they made sense: from Scaled Agile to Scrum of Scrums, from Big Room Planning to video conferencing. The work was consistently interdisciplinary. At ING, employees are organized in “tribes” - like Tribe Business Banking, of which Jaroslaw is Head of IT. The trick is that the “core team” includes IT professionals as well as business experts and customer journey designers. As Jaroslaw sees it, “We’re a unit with common goals, with a common set of tasks. This is a basic principle for us. We’re not separated into silos. Teamwork in the Tribe ensures fast, results-oriented development for the benefit of the customer.”

Local expertise, global community

Speaking of collaboration, as with many IT projects at ING, an international team was involved, spread across three countries and four locations. The global setup has many advantages for the employees. For example, instead of creating a specific component from scratch, it can often be sourced from colleagues in other countries. Of course, this reuse principle also works the other way around. If an engineer in Germany develops a component, it may find grateful customers on the other side of the globe: efficient coding with global impact. And thanks to the worldwide community with a social-network-style intranet, unbureaucratic technical exchange is always just a mouse click away.

Do your thing: working at ING

Lendico's IT integration is just one of ING's fascinating projects – and ING is constantly looking for new minds to implement its digital strategies at its Frankfurt am Main and Nuremberg sites. An attractive career opportunity for ambitious IT experts. Not only because of ING’s business models, but as an employer ING also combines the best of both worlds: the creative environment of a digital player and the stability of a bank. If you are looking for challenging topics, agile structures and a global sphere of activity, then you have come to the right place. “Empowerment” of employees is taken literally at ING, for example, through a generous, individually deployable education budget. Not to mention the strong team spirit. In large bank projects, the tribes do not just celebrate completion of the final round, but also the milestones achieved along the way. “Celebrating interim successes together – that is very important to us,” explains Jaroslaw. If this spirit is your thing, then come to work and celebrate with us! Find out about everything else on the ING job page.