ING Nederland makes carbon footprint insight available to all customers

All private customers can see the CO2 emissions of their expenses in the ING Mobile Banking App. ING does this in collaboration with carbon footprint management experts, Cogo. Through the Footprint Insight functionality, customers can see the impact of their spending on the climate. In addition to insight into their CO2 emissions, customers also receive tips to reduce their emissions and a comparison is made with the average CO2 emissions of the Dutch. For the roll-out to all customers, ING has improved both accessibility and comprehensibility. The customer's footprint is now easier to find, with the customer's spend and related footprint information shown together in the ING App.

ING launched the functionality in July 2022 as a trial in which 500,000 customers participated. This test proved successful. In order to understand sentiment towards the climate functionality, ING conducted a survey with some of these customers. Almost half of the users were able to indicate which purchases have a major impact on the climate and more than half said they would like to reduce their footprint and be informed about it. That is why ING is now making this functionality available to all private customers. ING customers decide for themselves whether they want to activate and use the new functionality in the ING App. Customers can easily arrange this themselves in the app.

"We have tested Footprint Insight extensively and listened to customer responses. That provides good insights. The roll-out to all our private customers is an important next step in the fight against climate change together with our customers. But if you want customers to go along with this, then of course you have to do it yourself first. We therefore work hard to make our business more sustainable. We make our offices more sustainable to reduce CO2 emissions and encourage our colleagues to travel sustainably. Our social and environmental risk policy (ESR) also applies globally to all our products and services including our loan portfolio. So we are ambitious, but we are not there yet and we are well aware of that," says Léon Wijnands, Head of Sustainability at ING Nederland.

"We know from our own research that customers want to lower their carbon footprint, but often feel powerless as to where to start as the climate crisis feels very large. Everyone's carbon footprint directly correlates with their spend, so banks are in a leading position to be able to help customers not only understand, but lower their carbon impact. That is why partnerships, such as this one with ING, are so  important. We launched our first banking partnership within the UK just over two years ago, and we are now working with 20 banks globally. It is fantastic to see ING join us in helping their customers address their individual climate impact" says Emma Kisby, CEO of Cogo, EMEA. 

How it works

The Insight Footprint functionality is an extension to the existing Insight function that groups income and expenditure by spending category. On that basis, the functionality represents an estimate of the CO2 emissions from these uses. This indicator is calculated on the basis of monthly expenditure per spending category such as ‘fixed charges’ and ‘shopping’ and is then multiplied by an emission factor. For example, if a customer spends 40 euros on groceries, this is multiplied by Cogo's Dutch emission factor for groceries, this will get a total of about 26kg CO2e.

The functionality does not distinguish from which store purchases are made. The tips given are general and relates to, for example, the fight against food waste. The multiplication of spending categories with an emission factor takes place in the secure and enclosed environment of ING. ING customers only get insight into data from accounts of which they are account holders or authorised representatives.

ING is constantly exploring the possibilities to expand and optimise the insights for customers. Therefore ING listens to customer feedback and collaborates with Cogo, who closely follow the market developments around CO2.

For more information about ING and sustainability please click here. To find out more information about Cogo, please click here.