Data analytics seems to be a key focus for ING, with this latest investment in Eiden Technologies. It recently also provided a £1.5m scale-up loan to Fixed Income analytics provider, Katana, as part of a £3m funding round.

Eigen Technologies, a provider of natural language processing (NLP) technology, has completed a $5m investment from ING Ventures that follows on from its $37m Series B round in November 2019. This brings the total funds raised by Eigen in its Series B round to $42m, and brings the overall funds raised to over $60m.

Eigen’s NLP technology is already used by ING in areas such as LIBOR replacement and loan operations. By working together, both companies aim to speed up the development of use cases in areas such as trade finance and SME banking.

ING is the second strategic investor that Eigen has brought on board, alongside Goldman Sachs, another Eigen client who co-led Eigen’s Series A round in 2018.

Eigen Technologies Co-founder & CEO Dr Lewis Z. Liu said, “In the years we have worked with ING we have found them to have some of the most advanced thinking in the market on the application of machine learning in financial services, something that comes from their fantastic innovation culture.”

Benoît Legrand, ING’s Chief Innovation Officer and CEO of ING Ventures said, “Eigen offers a strategic capability in the intelligent operations domain, deployed in use cases across retail as well as wholesale banking. This partnership will allow both companies to work closer together when implementing use cases through data and process analysis, so as to accelerate Eigen’s advantage in NLP as well as ING’s digital transformation.”