ING Apologizes for Discrimination

Modern discrimination is a system – a kind of name-calling without words.

A mosque that, year after year, has to explain where its donation money comes from. A general practitioner who receives questions about payments from foreign patients. A Muslim who has to justify a bank transfer during Ramadan.

It’s not a coincidence; it’s a pattern. A pattern that ING now acknowledges as the result of unnecessary questions, an impersonal tone, and insufficient understanding of cultural practices, as CEO Peter Jacobs writes in an open letter.

As Erkan Goenee summarizes in de Volkskrant: customers with a non-Western background are three times more likely to be treated with suspicion. Or as Sander Van Mersbergen writes in AD.nl: the bank asked questions it already had the answers to.

This is modern discrimination. Not in the form of angry faces, but through automated questionnaires, neutral protocols, and algorithms that claim to be “objective.” The courage to speak about the unintended yet systematic nature of this exclusion makes it painfully visible.

Still, this moment is important. Not because ING was wrong – we’ve known that for years, and ING is not an exception. But because the apology now comes with the acknowledgment of a system built not on trust, but on mistrust with a cultural warning label. Justice only exists when everyone is allowed to exist without having to explain themselves.