Blog Master G

My primary bank since at least 2001 has been NetBank. Overall, I was always really happy with them, but in recent years was much more enthusiastic about ING, and have written about the great savings rates offered by the ING Orange Savings from time to time.

ING recently launched a checking account — ING Electric Orange — in addition to its savings account, which pays more interest than most banks’ savings accounts. So I opened up one of those and have been using it for some of our banking in recent months. However, it lacked the flexibility of NetBank’s bill pay — for example, scheduling irregular payments, such as bimonthly or quarterly — so I never fully transitioned to the ING checking account.

It looks like it will soon be all one in the same. Over the weekend, it seems, NetBank was shut down by the federal government for failing to repay millions in loans, and the remaining assets and NetBank customer base (110,000 of us) were acquired by the much larger ING ($78 billion in assets and 6 million customers):

U.S. bank regulators shut NetBank Inc on Friday but said the Internet bank with $4.8 billion in deposits and assets remaining would reopen with online rival ING Bank taking over most of its operations.

…

ING agreed to pay a premium and take control of $1.5 billion of NetBank’s insured non-brokered deposits and buy $724 million of liquid assets, the FDIC said.

…

He said the transaction will add 110,000 new customers to ING Bank’s 6 million customers. ING Bank has $60 billion in deposits and $78 billion in assets, making it the 4th largest savings bank, or thrift, in the United States.

Hopefully ING will keep the best of NetBank features — like bill pay — so that I’ll now end up with the best of both banks.

Thanks, FDIC, for keeping our money safe!

As much of a tech guy I am and have never had a problem with virtual banking, it’s also nice to maintain an account at my local bank, where I can visit a branch from time to time.