Volksbank becomes ASN, brands SNS, Regiobank and BLG Wonen disappear

• Ruben Eg

  economics editor

De Volksbank will continue under the name ASN. The banking group is abolishing the brand names SNS, RegioBank and BLG Wonen. The bank says it chose ASN because it has the “strongest position” as a pioneer in sustainable and socially responsible banking.

This means that people who currently bank with SNS and RegioBank or have a mortgage with BLG Wonen will soon see ASN on their app. ASN customers will soon also be able to go to one of the offices that currently have SNS or RegioBank on the facade.

As ASN, De Volksbank believes it can improve its position as a “sympathetic challenger in the Dutch banking landscape”. At the same time, it wants to work cheaper under one brand name.

The decision means that three bank names with a history dating back more than a hundred years will disappear. SNS was founded in the late 1980s when various regional savings banks were merged into the Collaborating Dutch Savings Banks. In the 1990s, SNS merged with insurer Reaal to form bancassurer SNS Reaal.

This group had to be nationalized during the credit crisis due to a collapsing real estate division. The insurer was also in dire straits. Under the wings of the state, the banking branch continued separately as SNS Bank, including the separate brands SNS, ASN, RegioBank and BLG Wonen.

To draw a line under the past, the group was eventually renamed De Volksbank. “The bank has changed dramatically since the nationalization. A new name is appropriate,” then Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told the bank staff. “A new name is a new start.”

Eleven years after nationalization, the bank has not made sufficient progress. This summer, NLFI, the institution that manages the shares of banks and insurers that were nationalized during the credit crisis for the state, noted that De Volksbank is still not ready to be sold.

The bank makes too little profit and still has to solve many problems with computer systems, risk models and money laundering controls. The new chairman of the board, Roland Boekhout, therefore decided that it would be more efficient to continue with just one brand name.

As a result, the bank believes it will be able to handle fewer employees with 750 employees. The number of branches can also be reduced by almost half, from the current more than 600 to 360 to 320. “This transformation is necessary to make the bank healthy and to give it a good future,” Boekhoud emphasized last week.

Not much should technically change for SNS and RegioBank customers. De Volksbank’s brands are already on the same technical system, with the apps only differing in name and color.

Of all the brands, only ASN still has its own office in The Hague. This summer, De Volksbank put its head office opposite Utrecht Central train station, the former SNS Reaal building, up for sale. All brands must move to a new home by the end of 2026.