Speaking with ING U.S. CEO Rob Leary

ING sees a need and an opportunity among U.S. Hispanics, and the global financial services giant is pouring resources into it. ING U.S. CEO Rob Leary spoke with HispanicAd.com at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber convention in Dallas about the corporation’s efforts to improve its marketing and outreach to the Hispanic community.

HA.com: Why is ING putting such an emphasis on retirement services and life insurance for the Hispanic community?

RL: There is a huge opportunity for the financial services industry in the United States to do a much better job of educating and helping the U.S. Hispanic community meet their financial needs, particularly in the retirement space and in the life insurance space. I think that a defined strategy has been something that’s been overlooked by many of our competitors, and with the Hispanic community growing so rapidly and continuing to rise economically, they have more and more need for what the financial services industry can provide. But we’ve got to do right by them. We’ve got to do it in a way that we engender the trust of that community. And we’ve got to do it in a way that is fair and transparent. To me, that means really getting involved – not just doing things like translating materials into the Spanish language, but actually becoming culturally relevant.

HA.com: How so?

RL: We don’t have a tied agency force of ING employees out selling our product in the U.S.. We work with individual agents and representatives. In the case of the Hispanic community, we have individuals who are actually a part of the Hispanic community. Because we have all of these independent representatives and agents as well as a very strong presence in Latin America, we learned from them by listening to what they have to say. What we heard was that “You don’t just show up as a big large global financial institution and say we just want to be in the Hispanic community.” Trust is incredibly important in the U.S. Hispanic community, and word-of-mouth is also incredibly important. We realized that this has got to be something we do at the grassroots level, not with a bunch of fancy ads or translated brochures. We knew that we needed to enlist the help of not only national organizations like the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, but also the local Hispanic Chamber affiliates as well as many other organizations at the local level. We also knew that this needed to be a long-term commitment to be successful.

HA.com: You’re drawing on your global experience and expertise and tapping into those resources from Latin America to guide you in your efforts here.

RL: In addition to our existing U.S.-based Hispanic employees, we actually started bringing in some of our people (from Latin America) to work with our local Hispanic independent representatives. They really helped us to understand differences that we weren’t necessarily accustomed to. A perfect example would be very special family occasions like weddings and quince (sweet 15) and the role of saving for these events. What was happening was that some Hispanics who were saving for retirement and the like ended up using their funds for these occasions. They were depleting their accounts. So the question became, how do we get more focus on helping Hispanics save for both, and not one at the expense of the other?

HA.com: Can you tell us about ING for Life en Español and how technology fits into your approach? It’s more than a translation of your English-language version.

RL: ING for Life en Español is not a straight translation from our English-language life insurance education site. When it launches later this year, it will be a game-changer for the insurance industry and how it reaches out to the Latino community. It’s a very interactive web tool that, again, is very transparent – where you virtually interact with someone. We use Hispanic actors and culturally relevant references,. It’s almost like the actors are walking you through the education process, saying here is what life insurance is, here’s what it does, here’s why it’s important. And it gives you a chance to ask a lot of different questions that may be relevant for you and avoid all of the things that aren’t relevant.

It’s not a puff site for ING trying to sell an ING product. It’s really meant to be educational about: Why is life insurance important? What does it do? What’s its purpose? What are the basic products? And is it or isn’t it affordable?

ING is really working hard with U.S. Hispanics in local communities to really make a difference, to really try to understand their needs, to really try to be culturally relevant, to provide simpler, more transparent products that actually meet the needs of that community, instead of forcing them to take things that aren’t necessarily relevant for them and products that we just want to sell generically.

I think that we can be a great partner with the Hispanic community. I think we’ve got a lot of good lessons to draw on, but I know we’ve still got a lot to learn. So, I’m sure we’ll make mistakes, but we’re going to work very, very hard with Hispanics in their own communities to find a way to be successful together.