Tangerine, formerly known as ING DIRECT Canada, releases its rebranding timeline | Tangerine Bank | Discussion forum

Tangerine, the Canadian financial institution that along with President's Choice Financial (not to preclude the previous efforts by Pacific & Western Bank of Canada) pioneered the "direct banking" business model in Canada, has released its official timeline of its long rebranding campaign to Tangerine, thus, ending nearly 17 years of the "ING" brand & wordmark in Canada.

Among the highlights, detailed in this official brochure released on their recently-updated tangerine.ca website (updated as of March 3rd, 2014):

• The official launch (or relaunch, more accurately) date has been announced and is set for April 8th, 2014. On that date, the full tangerine.ca website (including online banking as well as new mobile banking apps) as well as new and regularly updated content such as personal finance blogs and helpful articles will go "live". As well, ingdirect.ca will officially become a "web redirect" to tangerine.ca. (I suspect Scotiabank has negotiated in their purchase agreement signed in 2012 with ING Groep NV, owner of the "ING" marks in Canada, that ingdirect.ca will redirect to tangerine.ca for probably a minimum of 6 months, but likely no more than 12-18 months, post-"relaunch" to ensure a smooth transition. After which, I expect ingdirect.ca to simply redirect to ING Groep's corporate homepage in the Netherlands, ending 17 years of the brand in Canada. There's probably also a non-compete clause in their agreement preventing ING Groep from re-entering the Canadian banking landscape/market for anywhere from 5 to 10 years, should they have been so inclined [which I don't think they are]. Interestingly, ING Groep has also outlined its plans for its U.S. retirement savings and investment management business ING U.S. - it will legally change its remaining corporate names to "Voya Financial" next month and, no later than late 2016, ING Groep will have divested its entire interests in Voya Financial - effectively ending a somewhat "government-forced" [since the Netherlands government owns a share of ING Groep] strategy of a complete exit of its entire North American operations.)
• As previously alluded to in its Winter 2014 customer newsletter, Tangerine products will be officially renamed in April 2014 (likely, April 1st, to coincide with the start of a new month). In a somewhat unsuspected move, it will also drop its Streetwise brand for its index mutual fund series of investment funds, a brand I actually like. It'll continue to own the Streetwise brand, much like it'll continue to own the THRiVE brand as well even though it's chequing account is dropping the moniker. ING DIRECT Streetwise Portfolios will simply become Tangerine Investment Funds, a somewhat boring name if you ask me, and its various "portfolios" will become Tangerine x Portfolio, where x is the relative "investment style" of the fund
• Coincidentally, April 8th is also the date of the Annual General Meeting for Tangerine's parent company, The Bank of Nova Scotia, according to the Management Proxy Circular, in Kelowna this year. Tangerine also revealed it will call itself Tangerine Bank in English (a French name has not been announced, though I suspect it'll be Banque Tangerine) and it looks like they're dropping the need to add "Canada" or "of Canada" to the name, which is a nice touch
• They said printed "householders" (probably printed copies of the quoted brochure) will be mailed to clients, likely this month and perhaps as soon as this week, while new debit cards will be issued in the "coming months" (I suspect in several "waves", beginning in late April/early May) and anyone who has not yet activated their new Tangerine debit card by Sept. 30th will see their ABM access cease as of that date as all previous ING DIRECT (CHIP-enabled and non-CHIP) debit cards will be deactivated and captured by ABMs if tried to use as of that date
• Scotiabank ABM access, including deposit, PIN Change and bill payment access at its full-service branch-based ABMs as well as surcharge-free cash dispensing access at its off-site branded ABMs that collectively have over 3,800 ABMs (the second or third largest ABM network in Canada, after RBC Royal Bank and effectively tied with CIBC/President's Choice Financial), will be added in "early May 2014". An exact date has not yet been set but my guess would be May 12th as anything after that would have to be called "mid- to late-May" and, since the relaunch date is April 8th, would continue a strategy of having things start in the second week of a month of launch
• Tangerine also revealed that its customers will enjoy surcharge-free cash dispensing and balance enquiry access to ABMs in the Global ATM Alliance group (something I'd predicted), which means neither Scotiabank, Tangerine nor any of its partners in the group, will charge any ATM usage/transaction fees at ABMs in the group (currently, Scotiabank, Bank of America, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas and Westpac are members and the six of them instantly become a larger network than, say, HSBC). Though not officially announced, I expect Scotiabank will have to add Tangerine ABM access to its own Scotiabank members, effectively adding Tangerine's own few Cafe and off-site ABMs to the Global ATM Alliance group, which has a few prominent ABM locations in the five major urban centres of Canada, so a nice addition for Scotiabank members/customers and the Global ATM Alliance group
• Tangerine Bank will officially leave The EXCHANGE ATM Network on Sept. 30th, 2014, marking exactly four full years of membership in the network. As of Oct. 1st, Exchange ATM member customers will no longer enjoy surcharge-free cash dispensing/PIN Change/deposit access at Tangerine ABMs and Tangerine customers will not be able to make deposits/change PINs/withdraw surcharge-free from Exchange ATMs
• Tangerine's debit card look has been revealed and its going horizontal, the industry-standard, effectively leaving National Bank of Canada as the sole debit/credit card issuer of vertically-oriented "Allure" MasterCards. Names will continue to be preprinted on Tangerine debit cards, though it's unclear as of yet if they'll and card numbers will continue to be "printed" on the cards or "embossed", like other issuers. If I had to wager, I'd say they'll go "embossed" given that's what Scotiabank does and they likely want to consolidate their debit card printing with one supplier
• They also seemed to have heeded customers' feedback and adopted a "brighter orange" instead of a "pale orange" for their colour scheme and logo

It's also unclear as to whether or not Tangerine (and Scotiabank) customers may eventually be able to have full-service (i.e., deposits/bill payments/PIN changes) access at its off-site, branded Scotiabank ABMs in Canada as it says on page 6 of the quoted brochure, "You’ll be able to make free withdrawals and deposits at Scotiabank ABMs and you will also be able to change the PIN for your Tangerine Card," so perhaps they are working through the logistical obstacles (i.e., process- and technology-based) that currently only allow fee-free cash dispensing/balance enquiry access at those points of service. It would effectively achieve Tangerine's stated aim to "work on" on its plans for maintaining the same level of Quebec-based service once they withdraw from The EXCHANGE ATM Network. That said, other ways to achieve that stated aim could mean a bipartite agreement between The Bank of Nova Scotia and/or Tangerine and potentially a Desjardins Group or Laurentian Bank. I can't see as them partnering with National Bank directly, given that they do compete, particularly in wealth management and full-service advisory business, outside of Quebec in the rest of Canada

I also suspect they may make one final adjustment to their "base" savings account rate, to 1.25%, by May and likely PC Financial & ICICI Bank Canada will follow suit in late April/early May with a slightly lowered (10 bps) deposit rate. We'll also see likely see an expansion of "promo" savings rates year-round, though likely at somewhat muted levels, particularly on non-registered deposits so that they can say, "earn (between) 0.5-0.75% bonus interest on net new deposits," making the effective average annual yield of 1.75% and 2% instead of 2.25-2.5%. That would help to expand their net interest margin while neutralizing people transferring money out for more than half the year. At most, they will have their all their cash for half (and maybe three quarters) of the year. Plus, in Tangerine's case, as Greg alluded to here, it continues their own business model of putting more emphasis on simple, no fee daily banking with no minimums than on simply rate shopping, emphasizing product simplicity, banking efficiency and no fees to grow the business (all great innovations and, I would argue, better than simply the highest deposit rates!).

A quick, final note (I think I've covered pretty well anything but would encourage dialogue, which may prompt further thoughts from me!): While many of my "predictions" vis a vis Tangerine seem to have come true, and it's nice to finally have a "roadmap" to a relaunch/rebranding date, my prediction that Scotiabank would bring Tangerine onto its own proprietary banking platform to further drive effiencies (and perhaps bring some of Tangerine's unique features for online banking to its own systems), while still keeping it a separate CDIC member and wholly-owned subsidiary, much like it did with Scotia iTRADE, seems to have not come true. I think that may be in their multi-year "pipeline" but they'll wait until they work these "kinks" out, drop The EXCHANGE ATM Network, fully add (and hopefully expand) Scotiabank full-service ABM access and launch a Tangerine Credit Card product before they look at that. We could potentially see some further technology integration in 2016 or 2017.

Hope that clarifies some things for everyone! Let me know what your thoughts are.

Cheers,
Doug