ING announced today that it has closed the sale of its life insurance
and wealth management venture in Australia and New Zealand to ANZ,
its joint venture partner. As announced on 25 September, the
divestment is part of ING's Back to Basics strategy to simplify the
organisation by focusing on fewer, strong franchises that form a
coherent group.

Under the terms of the agreement, ING sold its 51% equity stakes in
ING Australia and ING New Zealand to ANZ, who now has become the sole
owner of these businesses. In line with the announcement of 25
September, ING has received EUR 1.1 billion in cash from ANZ. The
transaction has generated a net profit for ING of EUR 325 million.
The sale will reduce the ING Insurance debt/equity ratio by 365 basis
points. The transaction has freed up EUR 950 million of capital.
These final terms are slightly better than the preliminary results as
disclosed on 25 September.

After the sale, ING will maintain a strong footprint in Asia in life
insurance and retirement services as the third largest international
insurance company in the region. As previously announced, the
transaction does not impact ING Direct, ING Investment Management,
ING Wholesale Banking and ING Real Estate, who will remain active in
Australia.




Press enquiries                                            Investor enquiries
Carolien van der Giessen         Karen Williams            Ewald Walraven
ING Group Media Relations        ING Asia/Pacific          ING Group Investor
                                                           Relations
+31 20 541 6522                  +852 9106 1350            +31 20 541 5463
Carolien.van.der.Giessen@ing.com Karen.Williams@ap.ing.com Ewald.Walraven@ing.com





ING PROFILE
ING is a global financial institution of Dutch origin issue banking,
investments, life insurance and retirement services to over 85
million private, corporate and institutional clients in more than 40
countries. With a diverse workforce of about 110,000 people, ING is
dedicated to setting the standard in helping our clients manage their
financial future.

IMPORTANT LEGAL INFORMATION
Certain of the statements contained herein are statements of future
expectations and other forward-looking statements. These expectations
are based on management's current views and assumptions and involve
known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results,
performance or events may differ materially from those in such
statements due to, among other things, (i) general economic
conditions, in particular economic conditions in ING's core markets,
(ii) performance of financial markets, including developing markets,
(iii) the implementation of ING's restructuring plan to separate
banking and insurance operations, (iv) changes in the availability
of, and costs associated with, sources of liquidity, such as
interbank funding, as well as conditions in the credit markets
generally, including changes in borrower and counterparty
creditworthiness, (v) the frequency and severity of insured loss
events, (vi) mortality and morbidity levels and trends, (vii)
persistency levels, (viii) interest rate levels, (ix) currency
exchange rates, (x) general competitive factors, (xi) changes in laws
and regulations, (xii) changes in the policies of governments and/or
regulatory authorities, (xiii) conclusions with regard to purchase
accounting assumptions and methodologies, (xiv) changes in ownership
could affect the future availability to us of net operating loss, net
capital loss and built-in loss carryforwards, and (xv) ING's ability
to achieve projected operational synergies.  ING assumes no
obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in
this document.

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