ING chief innovation officer Annerie Vreugdenhil is leaving the bank less than a year into the job to take up a position on the executive board of ABN Amro.
Vreugdenhil will leave ING at the end of the year before taking up the role of chief commercial officer, personal and business banking at ABN Amro in March.
An ING veteran, over the last year she has been a central part of a major overhaul of the Dutch bank's innovation programme under new CEO Steven van Rijswijk. Shortly after taking office in October last year van Rijsijk disbanded all of the bank's disparate innovation programmes and combined them into a single dedicated unit, ING Neo, under Vreugdenhil.
The reshuffle ultimately led to the departure of ING chief innovation officer and CEO of ING Ventures, Benoît Legrand who was sidelined in the revamp. Since then, chief operations and transformation officer Roel Louwhoff has departed for Standard Chartered.
Until a permanent successor to Vreugdenhil is found, Jeroen Plag will take on the role as head of ING Neo and chief innovation officer alongside his position has head of corporate strategy.
Says van Rijswijk: “Innovation is and remains of key importance to us as we continuously seek to improve the way we serve our customers. Over the past years, Annerie was instrumental in reshaping ING’s innovation approach, leading the effort to combine all innovation activities into one dedicated business area called ING Neo."