ING Bank (Australia) told its regulator for at least five quarters that it held about 60 per cent more emergency liquidity than the law requires, when the true figure sat close to the floor and at one point dropped beneath it. APRA responded on Thursday with licence conditions, a $50 million capital add-on and a higher minimum liquidity requirement for a bank with more than two million customers and assets above $100 billion.
The numbers are ING's own. In a disclosure published alongside APRA's announcement, the bank restated its liquidity coverage ratio for the four quarters to March 2026. It had reported figures between 161.1 and 167.6 per cent. Its adjusted figures are 103.6 to 110.3 per cent, against a legal minimum of 100. For the June 2026 quarter the adjusted average was 105.2 per cent, with a low of 85.9 per cent.
The ratio measures whether a bank holds enough cash and government securities to get through 30 days of stress without outside help. ING said its errors "related to the classification, treatment and reporting of certain cash flows, facilities and liquidity balances" and that it told APRA in July. No earlier public statement has been located. The bank's March disclosure, which reported a 167.6 per cent ratio, said it managed its position daily "with a Board approved buffer above the regulatory limit of 100%".
“Although the bank remains well capitalised, and benefits from the financial strength of the broader ING group, these breaches are not simply a reporting error," APRA deputy chair Therese McCarthy Hockey said. "When a bank cannot accurately measure one of its most important financial safeguards, it raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of its risk management and controls.”
The licence conditions require independent reviews into the causes of the reporting failures and into the bank's wider risk management and governance, a remediation plan, and independent assurance that the fixes are embedded. The capital add-on and the higher liquidity minimum stay until APRA is satisfied. The $50 million is not a fine. It is capital the bank must hold against operational risk, on top of a total capital ratio it reported at 18.7 per cent in June. ING said its adjusted liquidity ratio on 28 August was 181.0 per cent.
"Meeting our regulatory obligations is fundamental to operating as a bank and we have fallen short of the standards we set for ourselves and of the expectations rightly held by APRA," ING Australia chief executive Melanie Evans said. The bank said the problem was confined to ING Bank (Australia) Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dutch ING Bank N.V. that is not listed on the ASX. It reported a $591 million net profit for 2025, up 11 per cent, and mortgage growth it described as more than twice the rate of the wider market.
APRA has been here before. It imposed a 10 per cent add-on to Westpac's net cash outflows in December 2020 over liquidity calculation errors, and a $500 million capital overlay on Macquarie Bank in April 2021 that is still in place. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank was given licence conditions and had a $50 million add-on retained on 18 August, making ING the second bank in 16 days to receive conditions on its licence.
Deposits at ING Australia are covered by the Financial Claims Scheme up to $250,000 per account holder. APRA said the miscalculations ran "over several years". Only five quarters have been quantified, and ING warned that "additional errors, deficiencies or inaccuracies may be identified" as its review continues, with restatements for earlier periods still to be determined.
APRA has not published a deadline for the independent reviews. The next public check on the bank's figures is its September quarter disclosure.
