ING Groep : and EIB in loan agreement for sustainable projects

ING and the European Investment Bank (EIB) are making €400 million available for large business customers in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg to invest in sustainable projects.

As part of the agreement, the EIB will provide a €200 million loan at a low interest rate to ING. We will pass this benefit to our customers and double the loan amount, bringing the total amount available to €400 million. Companies selected for their sustainable impact will benefit from an interest rate discount of 0.3% because of the EIB's backing.

Projects will be selected in four categories: the energy transition, energy improvements in real estate for own use, circular economy and electric transportation. The loan will be available as of September 2019 for larger SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) with fewer than 3,000 employees.

'This new loan agreement with the EIB helps us in encouraging our clients to invest in sustainable projects,' says Annemein Kolk, head of Midcorporate Clients at ING Netherlands. 'There is still a lot to be done to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and the related Dutch Climate Agreement. With this loan we want to motivate our clients and reward them for accelerating their sustainability agenda.'

This agreement is in line with ING's wider approach to fighting climate change. We've committed to steer our loan book in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement to keep global warming to well-below two degrees, which we call the Terra approach. We do this by shifting our financing towards more lower-carbon technologies while engaging with and supporting existing clients to shift their own investments that way, too.

The EIB, or European Investment Bank, is the long-term lending institution of the European Union, owned by its member states. It makes long-term financing available for sound investments that contribute towards EU policy goals. Between 2015 and 2018 the EIB made nearly €3.7 billion in credit lines available to SMEs in the Benelux through various partners banks, including ING.

This isn't the first time we've joined with EIB to finance sustainable projects. In 2018 we each contributed €150 million to support green investments in the European shipping industry, recently joining to provide €110 million of that investment to Dutch shipping company Spliethoff.