Businessweek

Management, and Insurance Solutions. This segment’s Retirement Solutions business includes two product lines comprises two financial segments, such as Retirement and Annuities. It provides a product range addressing both the accumulation and income distribution needs of customers, through a distribution footprint of approximately 2,500 affiliated representatives and various non-affiliated agents and third-party administrators. Retirement provides tax-deferred, employer-sponsored retirement savings plans and administrative services to approximately 48,000 plan sponsors covering approximately 5.1 million plan participants in corporate, education, healthcare, and government markets. Retirement also provides rollover IRAs and other retail financial products, as well as financial advisory services to individual customers. This segment serves a spectrum of employers ranging from small companies to the largest of corporations and government entities. Annuities provides fixed and indexed annuities, tax-qualified mutual fund custodial products, and payout annuities for pre-retirement wealth accumulation and post-retirement income management sold through multiple channels. This segment’s Insurance Solutions business includes two product lines, such as Individual Life and Employee Benefits. It provides life insurance in the U.S. Individual Life provides wealth protection and transfer opportunities through universal, variable, and term products, distributed through independent channels to meet the needs of a range of customers from the middle-market through affluent market segments. The Individual Life distribution model is supported by independent life sales agents (approximately 2,200 independent general agents with access to approximately 93,000 producers), strategic distribution (approximately 30 independent managing directors supporting approximately 6,900 additional producers), and specialty markets (approximately 75 general agents with access to approximately 7,400 producers). Employee Benefits provides stop loss, group life, voluntary employee-paid, and disability products to mid-sized and large businesses. This segment has 58 employee benefits sales representatives, across 19 sales offices. Insurance U.S. Closed Block VA ING U.S. refined the hedging program to protect regulatory reserves and rating agency capital of the VA block for adverse equity market movements. ING U.S.’s focus in managing its Closed Block VA segment is on protecting regulatory reserves and rating agency capital from equity market movements through hedging and judiciously looking for opportunities to accelerate the run-off of the block, where possible. ING Investment Management This segment is the principal investment manager of ING Group with activities in Europe, the Americas, the Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. In 2012, the company announced an update on restructuring the insurance and investment management businesses whereby it decided to review strategic options for its Asian insurance and investment management businesses. It also stated its intention to keep an ING Investment Management presence in Singapore and Japan as part of the Europe-based ING Investment Management organization to protect global investment capabilities and primary client relationships. ING Investment Management International opened offices in New York and Atlanta in 2012 to retain and build up its investment capabilities in the fixed income sphere. ING Investment Management International and ING Investment Management U.S. are preparing for separate futures with their respective Insurance counterparts, providing various actively-managed strategies, investment vehicles, and advisory services in various major asset classes and investment styles. Both businesses deliver a range of investment strategies and services to both ING Insurance U.S. and ING Insurance Europe, as well to other retail and institutional clients, including other ING affiliates. Customers The company serves a customer base, including individuals, families, small businesses, large corporations, institutions, and governments. Disposals In March 2013, the compan