ING Americas Contributes 16.8% Operational Pretax Results To ING Group For 9-Month Reporting Period

ING Americas contributed 16.8% operational pretax results to ING Group's 9-month pretax income announced earlier today in Amsterdam. Despite strong performances by Canada, Mexico, and U.S. Institutional Markets and lower financing costs, ING Americas reported only a 1.0% increase over the same period in 2001 as a result of the impact of the weak U.S. economy and declining equity markets on its U.S. businesses. ING Americas is part of ING Group (NYSE: ING), one of the world's leading financial services companies.

"The reality of today's depressed and volatile U.S. equity markets has kicked the industry and put an unwelcome dent in our nine-month performance, despite good results in businesses not tied to the U.S. equity markets," said Glenn Hilliard, chairman and CEO of ING Americas. "As anticipated, we have been affected by the ongoing weakness in the U.S. markets and economy. We believe our businesses are showing good progress in difficult times and that our people have more than delivered on our integration and expense-save commitments. While the numbers are less than what we would like, we feel good about what has been accomplished to partly offset the U.S. market weakness and to build a solid base for the eventual market recovery."

The Americas' nine-month pretax results of $698.4 million were slightly above the same period in 2001 of $691.9 million. Strong underwriting performance by Canada and Mexico property/casualty businesses, including successful integration of new acquisitions in both markets, is the largest contributor to 2002 earnings growth. Continued success in restructuring and integration strategies in the U.S. also produced cost reductions in excess of expectations. The U.S. operations were positively impacted by lower financing costs due to decreased debt levels and lower interest rates. Offsetting these positive impacts were higher deferred acquisition cost (DAC) amortization, and lower fee revenues on equity-linked products and unfavorable investment losses. Bond impairments and losses for the nine-month period exceeded the same period in 2001 by $246.1 million. Pretax results in 2001 include one- time World Trade Center losses of $134 million.

The depressed U.S. equity markets had a significant adverse effect on ING Americas' equity-linked annuities operating results. The weakness in the stock market and the depressed level of assets under management (AUM) has accelerated DAC amortization (or "unlocking") and reduced fee income on AUM. One of the key assumptions in DAC amortization is the projected growth of stock market indices that directly impact AUM and related fee income. During the third quarter, ING reduced its estimated future market growth assumptions. This decision, combined with lower current levels of equity-linked AUM caused an acceleration of DAC unlocking, which, along with higher reserves for guaranteed benefits combined for a negative variance of $266.8 million from the nine-month period in 2001.

  Country results in the Americas are as follows:

  United States

ING's two core operating units for its U.S. businesses are U.S. Financial Services (USFS) and U.S. Institutional Businesses (USIB). USFS is composed of individual life, annuity, mutual funds, broker-dealer, and worksite businesses -- the latter includes defined contribution and pension, group insurance and payout management businesses. USIB consists of individual and group reinsurance businesses, and the Institutional Markets business, which includes guaranteed investment contracts and other funding agreements.

In December 2001, a major reorganization of the U.S. operations was announced. The initiative is ahead of schedule, and through nine months a 14.6% reduction in workforce has been achieved. Due to aggressive expense management initiatives, operating expenses in 2002 are down 13% from 2001.

U.S. Financial Services -- Nine months pretax results for USFS were $462.6 million, down from the prior year period of $717.7 million, driven predominantly by the depressed equity markets.

"Despite bright spots for the quarter such as the launch of the ING Financial Horizons retirement business, premium growth of 14%, and solid progress on expense reduction and integration initiatives, our year-over-year results closely mirror the realities of the economic and equity markets," said Tom McInerney, CEO of the USFS business.

McInerney noted that the second half of 2002 is proving to be tough across the industry. "The S&P Index, which most closely correlates to our U.S. equity-linked businesses, was down 29 percent for the first nine months of 2002 and the market has endured a phenomenon not seen since the 1930s -- consecutive, negative double-digit quarterly declines." He emphasized that continued bond defaults and decline in equity market conditions in the United States is driving unfavorable results for USFS.

"We have therefore focused our efforts on what we can most directly control -- and we remain on track, and even ahead of schedule, to achieve the integration and cost reductions we started last December," McInerney continued. "Unfortunately, our significant successes in managing our business are masked by the significant unfavorable impacts of the weak economic environment."

U.S. Institutional Businesses -- USIB reported solid pretax results of $176.8 million, up from the prior 9-month reporting period of $161 million. This strong performance was driven largely by the Institutional Markets business as a result of higher investment income and spreads, and business growth producing an average inforce of approximately 23% higher than the prior year.

Canada -- The P&C business continued its consistent growth during the 9-month period with pretax results of $109.1 million, up $26.1 million from the same period in 2001. Strong gains were attributable to continued favorable underwriting results and rapid integration of the recently acquired Zurich Canada business as well as higher realized capital gains.

Mexico -- ING's businesses in Mexico reported very strong performance, with pretax results of $192.6 million due to sustained, favorable underwriting results and expense reductions resulting from operating centralization initiatives. Pretax results of $59.9 million for the same period in 2001 reflected ING's then-49% minority ownership in Seguros Comercial America. In June 2001, ING increased its shareholding of Seguros Comercial America and currently wholly owns this business which has been rebranded as ING Comercial America.

South America -- Pretax results for ING's businesses in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Netherlands Antilles of $44.6 million were $10.6 million below the nine-month period in 2001 primarily due to currency devaluation and higher interest rates in Brazil, adverse performance in the health business of the Netherlands Antilles operation, and the divestiture in late 2001 of operations in Colombia. ING continues to be the leading insurer in South America.

Financial amounts disclosed herein are determined in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the Netherlands. A description of these accounting principles and variances from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States are included in the ING Groep N.V. Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Certain of the statements contained in this release 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 emerging markets, (III) the frequency and severity of insured loss events, (IV) mortality and morbidity levels and trends, (V) persistency levels, (VI) interest rate levels, (VII) currency exchange rates, (VIII) general competitive factors, (IX) changes in laws and regulations, and (X) changes in the policies of governments and/or regulatory authorities. ING assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this release.

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SOURCE: ING Americas

CONTACT: Dianne Bernez of ING Americas, +1-770-618-3910

Web site: http://www.ing-usa.com/