ING Group shareholders voted to reappoint Steven van Rijswijk as Chief Executive Officer at the bank's Annual General Meeting held on 22 April 2025, securing his leadership through the 2029 AGM. The reappointment, confirmed during proceedings in Amsterdam, marks a further vote of confidence in van Rijswijk's stewardship of the Dutch banking group, which he has led since 2020 through a period of significant transformation across the sector.
The AGM provided shareholders with the opportunity to pass formal judgment on the bank's leadership and strategic direction. Van Rijswijk's reappointment for a full term signals that investors are broadly supportive of the course he has charted, including the bank's ongoing Think Forward strategy, which has guided ING's transformation across retail banking, technology investment, and international markets over recent years.
FIVE YEARS OF THINK FORWARD LEADERSHIP
Van Rijswijk assumed the chief executive role at ING in 2020 and has since overseen the bank through a period of profound change in the financial services industry. His tenure has encompassed the low-rate environment that characterised the early part of the decade, the subsequent sharp rise in global interest rates, and the bank's ongoing push to deepen its digital capabilities and grow its mobile customer base across more than 40 countries.
The Think Forward strategy that van Rijswijk has continued to drive is centred on making ING a leading platform bank, offering customers straightforward and technology-led financial services. Under his leadership, ING has invested in expanding the number of customers who use the bank as their primary financial institution, a metric the group tracks closely as an indicator of engagement, loyalty, and revenue potential across its retail markets.
His reappointment to a new term running through the 2029 AGM provides meaningful continuity at the top of one of Europe's largest retail and commercial banking groups. It removes near-term uncertainty about executive leadership at a time when European banks are navigating a more complex interest-rate environment, managing digital transformation programmes, and seeking to improve capital returns for their shareholders.
The full term through the 2029 AGM gives van Rijswijk a multi-year mandate to advance the bank's ambitions in digital banking, sustainable finance, and customer growth. ING's supervisory board had nominated him for reappointment in recognition of his performance and the bank's trajectory under his management, and shareholders at the AGM gave their backing to that nomination.
AGM VOTES CONFIRM BOARD CONFIDENCE
The Annual General Meeting at which van Rijswijk's reappointment was ratified also addressed a range of other governance matters standard to the AGM calendar. The vote on his continued leadership was set out in the explanatory notes to the agenda published ahead of the meeting, providing shareholders with full details of the proposed term length and the board's rationale for seeking his reappointment at this stage.
ING's AGM structure allows shareholders to exercise formal oversight of board-level appointments and remuneration. The transparent presentation of the reappointment proposal in the explanatory notes is consistent with Dutch corporate governance norms, which emphasise clear communication between the supervisory board and the broader shareholder base on material decisions including CEO tenure.
Van Rijswijk's continued leadership provides a stable foundation as ING seeks to build on its recent financial performance and execute the next phase of its strategy. With his mandate now extended through 2029, the bank can plan with confidence over a multi-year horizon as it competes in an evolving European and global banking landscape shaped by digital disruption, regulatory change, and shifting customer expectations.