Pinar Abay

Pinar Abay (ING) on the impact of Agentic AI on retail banking

5 minute read 20 Nov 2025

Related topics

Financial services

According to Pinar Abay, agentic AI helps ING serve customers faster and smarter while innovating safely.

In brief

ING leverages agentic AI to accelerate retail processes, particularly in mortgages, customer interactions, and data processing.
Balancing innovation with strict guardrails is essential to maintain customer trust and safety.
Scaling, governance, and empowering teams are at the core of ING’s ambition to become a market leader in AI-driven retail banking.

Pinar Abay is responsible for the retail business within the Management Board Banking of ING, where (agentic) AI is regularly part of the conversation. She speaks passionately about ING's strong ambitions and how she monitors the balance between speed and caution in her role. "As soon as something demonstrably works, we scale it up rapidly."

AI offers many opportunities in retail banking, which really needs no further explanation. We currently focus on five areas: chatbots in contact centres, hyperpersonalised marketing, KYC, wholesale bank lending, and software engineering.

One of the areas where we see the most potential for agentic AI is mortgage lending. With agentic AI, we can radically accelerate that process while simultaneously improving the customer experience. In the Netherlands, we intend to use agentic AI to initiate and complete mortgage applications, transforming how we engage with customers by automating data collection and credit checks – while ensuring that personal advice remains human-led.

Furthermore, we are testing voice agents, with pilots underway in Spain and Germany, to handle routine call centre tasks using advanced speech technology. We see opportunities across retail business domains such as mortgages, business lending, and private banking. There can be no misunderstanding: AI is fundamentally transforming retail banking.

Everyone can experiment with technology.

Responsible AI

Discover how Responsible AI helps organizations ensure fairness, reliability, and privacy while unlocking the full potential of AI.
Read more
EY.ai Lab

Experience AI innovation at the EY.ai Lab! Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to develop tailored solutions that address your unique business needs.
Read more

Growth plans

We are currently in an unprecedented time where we do not yet have all the answers, and technology continues to evolve rapidly. Waiting is not an option, as it risks falling behind with agentic AI. Being number one in the market truly matters in our view. After all, no one remembers number two. Personally, I believe ING can be that number one, which is essential to realizing our ambition – to be the fastest-growing retail bank in Europe. This is also the most important argument when selecting initiatives that contribute to this transformation: does it help us to be first, and therefore contribute to our growth plans?

Guardrails and responsible innovation

There is no shortage of ideas. Teams are working passionately on Proof of Concepts to bring those ideas from the drawing board to practice. The turbo is on, in line with our strategy to lead the market. At the same time, a lot is at stake in doing this safely and reliably, as we, as a bank, do not want to betray our customers' trust. Customers do not care how we organise things behind the scenes, but they do expect us to handle it in a trustworthy manner and to build the right guardrails regarding the use of AI and AI agents.

We also build in the necessary caution, which naturally creates tension. What we need is often not yet developed, so experimentation is essential. For AI agents, this is particularly relevant regarding both short-term and long-term memory. How do we organise that effectively? In practice, we spend considerable time considering what could go wrong – sometimes even more than on what it could yield.

The turbo is on business transformation.

Scaling up and organisation-wide impact

Once something has proven itself, we scale it rapidly, moving towards unified ways of working and technology. The challenge of such a transformation is that you have to play chess on many boards simultaneously. It is evident that it is not just about building technology; it also impacts the entire organisation. It requires a lot from our teams, from recruitment, and from extensive training programs to develop future skills. Furthermore, entirely new insights are required regarding governance of AI agents – a completely new field of work. For example, how do you ensure the right safeguards when deploying an agent farm?

Empowerment and democratizing technology

What I personally find one of the most intellectually interesting aspects is how technology democratizes. In the past, business teams had to submit requests to IT to develop something, and developers would then get to work. Now, there is much empowerment for professionals: everyone can experiment with technology and create applications that provide immediate value. For example, through prompt engineering. This is fantastic because it creates innovative capacity in the areas where people know what is needed. At the same time, it is important not to allow total freedom, as quality and reliability must be safeguarded. Balancing speed and caution must therefore be actively guided by the board.

This article is from the Eye on Finance magazine. Download the PDF (Dutch) here for more insights on Agentic AI and the financial sector, or explore the other articles below.

Summary

ING’s Pinar Abay highlights how agentic AI accelerates retail banking, especially in mortgages, customer interactions, and data processing. ING aims to lead the market by scaling proven AI solutions quickly while keeping strict safety guardrails to maintain customer trust. The technology transforms operations, empowers teams to experiment, and requires new governance models. Balancing innovation speed with reliability is central to ING’s growth strategy.

In this edition

How NN is redesigning customer processes with Agentic AI

How NN uses AI-Agents to transform processes, exceed customer expectations, and engage employees in a safe digital transformation.

Rob Huijbers + 1

AI-agents can make or break a financial institution

Explore how AI-agents create opportunities and risks in finance. Onsi, Stater, and EY share insights on safe, effective adoption.

Rob Huijbers + 1

About this article

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.