The funds will be packaged and sold through a new product called the Orange Investment Account, a portfolio of funds covering a variety of investment strategies.
The six new ING DIRECT funds are new O-shares of existing funds offered through
ING DIRECTs strategy for the product is to make online investing and banking as straight-forward as possible, Deck said. "The idea is to make financial services simple and weve been successful on the banking side," Deck said. "Now were moving it from savings to investing."
ING DIRECTs new stable of funds is made up of a large-, mid- and small-cap index fund, a bond fund, international fund and a technology fund.
The funds will be marketed exclusively to the firms 300,000 banking clients and the success of the funds will be driven by the growth of the banking side of the business, Deck said.
ING DIRECT has approximately $4 billion in assets.