Risk Trainee at ING

Tim Slingerland, Risk Trainee at ING since April 2017

"As an econometrist, it’s interesting to be able to indulge in all that data"

Econometrist Tim Slingerland will soon be heading off to Madrid for his second rotation within the Risk traineeship. He will be working in Market Risk at ING Spain.

“I’m going to be helping out in the Market Risk department at ING Spain for five months. A lot of trainees do their second rotation abroad; it’s an excellent chance to spend three to six months somewhere completely different. I feel pretty privileged when I think that I’ll soon be living in an apartment in Madrid and working for a bank that’s growing really fast and is involved in some fantastic innovations.”

Machine learning

Tim has already worked with some pioneering technology during his first assignment; in the Credit Risk Management department, he was focused on predictive analytics for consumer loans. “The department analyses the risk of losses if retail banking customers can’t repay their loans; it’s about mortgages, personal loans and credit cards. The department makes models and monitors the risks. I worked on a project based on machine learning, an innovative technology that is increasingly being used within the bank. It’s a fairly specialised area which made it even more interesting. My background in econometrics came in really useful for this assignment, especially in terms of analytical thinking and breaking things down into smaller pieces. Furthermore we had lots of freedom to experiment because the technology is so new and we’re by no means utilising it to its full potential, so that was fun.”

Empowering one another

Before joining the traineeship, Tim was an intern at ING and he soon realised that he wanted to stay at the company – because of the culture of openness, the mentality of ‘empowering one another’ and the agile way of working in appealing surroundings. “But above all because of all the opportunities you have here. I meet so many people who have been working at ING for years and have made all kinds of interesting career moves. It’s easy to switch and you can gain experience in many different places – which benefits not only you as a person, but also the bank. Additionally, you build up an expansive network during your traineeship; where else do you get that chance as a starter?”

Unimpressive

“In return, you have to be prepared to put in a lot of effort yourself. ING regarded my two master’s qualifications as valuable, but my CV as a whole was not particularly impressive. I didn’t serve on the board of a student association for a year, for example, and I didn’t go abroad as part of my degree, but I’ve always played hockey at a fairly high level. And it seems that my motivation swung things in my favour. Besides that, people with a quantitative background are interesting for ING and vice versa; the bank is rapidly becoming more and more data-driven. We not only have the chance to add a lot of value, but we can also indulge in the huge volumes of data that we have access to.”

About Tim

Tim did a master’s in financial economics in Rotterdam, a pre-master’s in econometrics and a master’s in quantitative finance. He did his graduation assignment at ING. He has played hockey from a young age, for a small club yet at a relatively high level. His biggest passion is surfing; iIn between finishing his internship and starting his traineeship he went surfing in Hawaii and on the west coast of the USA. Tim lives in Rotterdam.