By Eileen Alt Powell
The Associated Press

While most banks are spiffing up branches and launching new products to deepen relationships with customers, ING Direct has set off in the opposite direction.

The online bank offers plain vanilla savings accounts and certificates of deposit as well as a limited selection of adjustable rate mortgages. Customers have to call in, send a letter or go online to get to them.

If traditional institutions are the Saks Fifth Avenue or Macy's of the retail banking world, "we're the factory outlet mall," said chief executive Arkadi Kuhlmann.

"Everybody else wants to customize and personalize, to develop relationships, that kind of thing," he said in a recent interview. "My idea was always that a savings account is just a savings account. If I make it a commodity product - meaning that it is standardized, it is simple, it is straightforward - then I can basically produce thousands of them at a good price."

The strategy seems to be working. Since ING Direct was launched at www.ingdirect.com in September 2000, it has drawn more than 2 million customers and collected $26 billion in deposits, putting it among the top 40 deposit-taking banks and thrifts.

And it's pulling in new money at a rate of $1 billion a month.

ING Direct is an online banking subsidiary of the Dutch financial giant ING Group, which is headquartered in Amsterdam. Kuhlmann joined the company in the mid-1990s, first launching ING Direct Canada in 1996 and then moving to the states four years later to get ING Direct USA going.

The American operation has no bank branches or automated teller machines, though it does have a handful of cafes - in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles with more to come in Washington and Miami.

No-frills savings

Its major draw is no-frills savings accounts with no fees, no minimum balance requirements and very competitive interest rates. The Orange savings account is currently paying 2.2 percent interest, about double the rate at brick-and-mortar banks, while its CDs are close to or above national averages in yields.

Catherine Graeber, an e-banking analyst with Forrester Research, said ING Direct's challenge is getting consumers to break long-held banking habits.

"For most consumers, where their branches are located and ATMs are located is very important," she said. For ING Direct to continue growing, it must find "consumers who are in a mind-set to start saving."

She thinks the bank has set up to do that by "harnessing the Internet" in ways other institutions haven't. For example, nearly one-third of ING Direct's automatically deposit their paychecks or automatically transfer surplus funds into their accounts every month, she noted.

For Kuhlmann, simplifying the banking process for consumers translates to a simplified business model. ING Direct operates nationally with a staff of just 1,000, and his operating costs are about one-third of traditional banks, he said.

But that also means that to remain a high-volume, low-margin business, Kuhlmann sometimes "fires" customers. It's generally because they call too often or write too many letters or need too much hand-holding.

Different kind of banker

Some characterize Kuhlmann as "the anti-banker's banker," and he doesn't reject that description.

He eschews suits, preferring to work in an open-necked white shirt, khaki pants and loafers. His office is not in a major city but on the sixth floor of a 200-year-old converted warehouse overlooking the Christina River south of downtown Wilmington, Del.

Kuhlmann says he's not trying to be different just for the sake of being different but because it's good for business.

"There are 16,000 banks out there, and the choice was, 'Do we want to be another bank or do we want to be different?'" he said. "The point is, if we're not different we're not going to get noticed, and if we're not noticed, nobody's going to see what we really have to offer."

His bank's motto is, "Lead America Back to Saving," and a sign with those words is on the desks of all his workers.