• Arjan's werk
  
  
• Mier op kantoor!
  
  
• Ar in de pers
  
  
• De Radja van Naga
  
  
• Hand met 6 vingers!
  
  
• Ratjetoe
  
  

Arjan Bol (30) joined ING in early 1997 in what was then called the Management Trainee program. During this period it truly became a Global Management Program for him since he worked for ING in four different countries in his four years with ING. Currently he is the Vice President for Marketing & Sales of ING Life in the Philippines.

In my first year I worked at Postbank, RVS and ING Seguros Mexico. The thing I liked about the project year was that I was able to get a “taste” of different parts of ING in a short period of time. I found out that the cultures were not only different in different countries but even that different business units in the Netherlands have very different cultures. After the project year I felt that I wanted to work in a business unit for a longer period and to have a bigger scope of my responsibility. I found what I looked for in my first function at the retail marketing department for individual life insurance of Nationale-Nederlanden in Rotterdam.

After working at Nationale-Nederlanden for almost 2 years I was asked to work on a project for six months in South Korea for the implementation of the strategic alliance between ING and the Housing & Commercial Bank. During this period I got the possibility to visit the Philippines together with my wife to find out whether we wanted to live and work here for a longer period. Almost from the moment we landed we felt at home because we really liked the country, its people and the company I work for.

My wife coincidentally also worked for ING in the Netherlands. We were very happy when her business unit, ING Real Estate, offered her a contract to research the Philippines’ real estate market after they found out that we were moving here. In this way the thing we always hoped for, being sent out abroad together, became a reality.

The culture of the Philippines is an interesting result of more than 300 years Spanish colonial rule, 50 years of American rule, millennia of local cultures on 7000 different islands and centuries of Chinese immigration. This ‘melting pot’ created the second largest Roman Catholic country in the world (and the only predominantly Christian country in Asia), a high density of fast food chains, a constitution written in English, Asian slum areas, American shopping malls, Chinese business tycoons and Spanish eating habits (at least three main meals plus three “merienda” snacks in a day!). Above all, however, it created a very friendly and joyful population.

Because of the different influences the culture in the Philippines can be described as very “hybrid’. One of the more striking examples for me is the way distance, height, weight and time are measured with different variables. This is different from most other countries where people use one way of measuring. In the Philippines people use kilometers and meters for distance, whereas height is measured in feet and inches. For weighing people pounds are used, whereas the weight of fruits and meat is measured in kilos. The numbers for telling the time are in Spanish, amounts of money are in English and the local language, Tagalog, is used for counting people and objects.

Even the languages used here are of a “hybrid’ nature. The verbal and written language for doing business in the Philippines is English. This makes working here a lot easier for expats like myself since there is no language barrier. The official language, however, is Tagalog, a mix of Malay, Spanish and native languages. Besides the official languages there are over 20 dialects, which can be as different from one another as Tagalog and English. Filipinos use the different languages at the same time. It’s quite normal to hear the President of the country speak two or three different languages within one official speech (or even within one sentence!)

Even though it’s not really necessary to learn the local language for working and living here, I tried to learn the basics of Tagalog in the past year. Now I am very happy I did that, since it makes working and living here much more fun. Knowing the language you can sometimes understand more about the people and their customs. This helps a lot since the life insurance industry here can be classified as “people’s business”. I guess it’s also fun for my Filipino colleagues to see the Dutch CEO and myself, as the only non-Filipinos in ING Life, joking around to each other in Tagalog.

The Philippines’ life insurance market was closed to new foreign companies until 1996. By that time the market was mainly dominated by subsidiaries of big American and Canadian life insurance companies that were all ready here when the market closed decades ago. ING Life and 15 other foreign companies entered the market in 1997. After the first 2 difficult years, the past 2 years have shown better results for ING Life. In the first quarter of 2001 the life insurance subsidiary of Aetna in Philippines was integrated. Aetna Life also started in 1997 and was slightly smaller than ING Life. The first results of the integrated company look promising and give ING Life a better position in this highly competitive market. ING Life now has more than 500 tied agents in 12 branches nationwide. The head office consists of 100 persons. After the integration the company holds the number two position among the new entrants of 1997 and a top 10 position among all 40 life insurance companies is within reach.

Working in this company and especially during the dynamic phase it’s in now, is a great (and intense!) experience for me. The best part for me is the combination of strategic and operational “hands on” elements in my job. This means for example that during the same afternoon I am discussing the strategic options for the integration in the management team and one hour later I am negotiating with a vendor for the color of the signage on one our branches. In that sense I am enjoying a “hybrid” job in a “hybrid” country!

After living and working here now for almost a year, my wife and I are happy that we took the challenge to move here. In this short period we made new friends and had a lot of interesting experiences both inside and outside the company environment. We are not sure how much we “Undutchified” in a year, but we certainly hope we were a bit Filipinized in this period!

Click here to see more on the website of ING Life Philippines