Benzinga | Nov 9, 2021 10:59AM EST

Financial Services Giant ING Considers Jumping Into DeFi

Dutch financial services behemoth ING Groep NV (NYSE:ING) is considering launching its own decentralized finance (DeFi) lending services.

What Happened: ING Chief Innovation Officer Annerie Vreugdenhil said during the Singapore Fintech Festival that the firm is working on a trial of its DeFi peer-to-peer lending protocol with the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets, according to a Monday Ledger Insights report.

See Also: WHAT IS DEFI?

Vreugdenhil said that the company is interested in "peer-to-peer lending or open up lending capabilities with different kinds of collateral." She noted that ING's DeFi lending system will not use Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and will instead experiment with other kinds of collateral while avoiding Bitcoin's volatility.

ING joining the DeFi space is a great sign of maturity for the industry, especially considering that it manages over $1 trillion of assets. The report follows the total value locked in DeFi protocols growing by 936% over the past year, reaching $114.8 billion as of the beginning of October.

See Also: Top 10 DeFi Projects To Watch In 2022

Photo: Ceescamel via Wikimedia Commons