What ING’s New Private Markets Unit Reveals About Banking Leverage
Private markets are often dismissed as niche, slow-growth sectors. Yet ING Groep NV has just carved out a dedicated unit for these deals, calling it a “key growth” area within its wholesale banking division in 2025. This move signals more than a simple product shift—it exposes a fundamental leverage mechanism in banking strategy. “The best leverage isn’t scale alone—it’s repositioning constraints to unlock hidden growth,” as industry operators rarely articulate.
Why Private Markets Aren’t Just Incremental Revenue
Conventional wisdom treats private markets as slower, less liquid, and riskier compared to public markets, dampening enthusiasm. Banks chase volume and speed in public securities, believing growth hinges on transaction volume or interest margins. ING’s repositioning challenges this.
Instead of seeing private markets as a marginal subsidiary, ING treats them as a leverage point by building a specialized unit. This isolates decision-making and product innovation, reducing the constraint of traditional banking silos and legacy risk models. This echoes what we saw in Wall Street’s tech selloff, where profit constraints weren’t demand but legacy systems.
Specialization Unlocks Systemic Leverage
ING’s move is a structural play to offload the friction traditional banks face scaling private deals. Unlike banks which embed private markets in broad wholesale units, fragmenting attention, a focused team creates compounding operational advantages.
This mirrors what OpenAI achieved scaling ChatGPT to 1 billion users by separating core AI development from UI development pipelines (source). Similarly, ING’s unit can automate diligence, use bespoke analytics, and tailor customer approaches without legacy bank constraints.
Alternatives Miss Opportunity for Constraint Repositioning
Competitors often spread private market activities thinly across general teams or outsource risk assessments. This diffusion drains focus and decouples incentives from results. ING instead rewired its system to resolve this constraint, gaining agility and scale in a notoriously complex asset space.
In contrast, many banks maintain static wholesale units, stuck with manual workflows that inflate costs. ING’s approach lowers deal processing costs and shortens time-to-close by embedding automation—reminiscent of how dynamic work charts accelerated growth in tech firms (source).
What This Means for Global Banking Leverage
The hidden leverage unlocked by ING’s private markets unit is constraint repositioning: freeing growth from legacy silos to amplify returns without proportional headcount or capital increase. Banks in regions like Europe that face slow credit growth can mimic this to build durable advantage against fintech entrants.
Operators should watch how ING integrates automation and client specialization—this signals a broader shift from asset scale to system design.
“Banking’s next growth isn’t bigger—it’s smarter constraint shifts.”
Related Tools & Resources
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is ING’s new private markets unit?
ING’s new private markets unit launched in 2025 is a dedicated team within its wholesale banking division focused on private market deals. It aims to unlock hidden growth by repositioning traditional banking constraints and applying automation.
Why are private markets considered important by ING?
ING views private markets as a key growth area rather than a niche sector. By building a specialized unit, ING can reduce legacy risk model constraints and focus on operational advantages, which challenges conventional thinking that private markets are slow and illiquid.
How does ING’s approach differ from other banks regarding private markets?
Unlike many banks that spread private market activities across general teams or outsource risk assessments, ING created a focused unit to isolate decision-making and automate workflows, lowering deal processing costs and shortening time-to-close.
What is meant by "constraint repositioning" in ING’s strategy?
Constraint repositioning refers to ING’s strategy of freeing growth from legacy silos and systems. It involves redesigning operational constraints to unlock scale and returns without proportional increases in headcount or capital.
How does automation play a role in ING’s private markets unit?
Automation enables ING’s private markets unit to streamline diligence processes, use bespoke analytics, and tailor customer approaches more efficiently, leading to cost reductions and faster deal closures.
What potential impact does ING’s unit have on global banking leverage?
ING’s unit demonstrates a shift in banking leverage from scale to smarter system design. This approach can help banks, especially in Europe with slow credit growth, build durable advantages against fintech competitors by integrating automation and specialization.
What tools are suggested to support private market strategies like ING’s?
Advanced analytics and attribution tools like Hyros are recommended to optimize marketing investments and capture hidden value, aligning with ING’s strategic focus on leveraging private markets through data-driven insights.
Who authored the article and when was it published?
The article was authored by Paul Allen and published on December 4, 2025.