Looking forward with THINK

Our research team is dedicated to thinking about the future, which is essential to ING’s purpose of ‘empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and business’. Now, with THINK, everyone will be able to freely access the best of ING’s economic and financial analysis. Over the coming months, we aim to add a broader array of features and topics. With the world in flux, we will venture deeper into the realms of consumer behaviour, sustainability, technology and politics.

This all comes at a time when knowledge, let alone data, is becoming a commodity. But the unending search for wisdom starts from asking the right questions:

• What are we trying to achieve?
• How should we think about shocking new changes?
• What are the causes?
• What do we need to know?

Machines are beginning to help, but in the end, it’s up to us.

We’re all facing fresh challenges and opportunities in making decisions.

Our macroeconomists now spend as much time reckoning with political scenarios and social trends as dealing with the long economic shadows of the global financial crisis. Our market strategists wrestle with distortions from central bank interventions and ever-more complex regulation. Our consumer economists see households and individuals contending with how to take more responsibility for their money amidst dramatic change.

Rapid technological change helps here, but it also hinders. If there are a thousand voices, how do you hear yourself think through the noise?

We want to help.

We hope by combining our thoughtful insights with those of academic and business experts, we will help people navigate the financial markets, and, yes, life. We’ll not only be looking at the latest trends in the global economy and giving our reaction to breaking news. We’ll also focus on the consumer side too. ING is renowned for marshalling expertise in social sciences, to help make smarter financial decisions.

We aim to be clear and sharp in our analysis; we won’t clutter our insights with meaningless jargon, we’ll just get to the point. But thinking starts with listening: we’d love to hear what you think.