ING Goes It Alone as Global Banks Partner With Private Credit

Dutch banking giant ING Groep NV doesn’t plan to follow competitors who have set up wide-ranging partnerships with the private credit firms that are upending traditional lending, according to the head of its wholesale business.

“So far, I continue to just be maybe quite old fashioned and focused on what we need to do to run our bank,” Andrew Bester, a member of ING’s management board for banking, told reporters in Frankfurt on Wednesday.

As direct lenders increasingly challenge banks in the supply of credit, the answer for some of the incumbents has been to earn fees by handing ...