ING has restructured its trade and commodity finance (TCF) unit and appointed Maarten Koning as global head of the new division.

He replaces Anthony van Vliet, who left the post in August to become the bank’s global head of know your customer (KYC) for wholesale banking. ING’s global head of commodities, food and agri, Lynn Ng, has been holding the role on an interim basis since then.

ING’s reorganised trade finance business brings together its structured commodity finance (SCF) units in Geneva and Asia into its TCF division. Under this new structure, the bank’s SCF business will function as a product partner, working alongside its TCF parent account managers to provide structured solutions to commodity traders in supporting their needs to secure supplies from commodity producers.

Koning will lead the combined unit from Geneva, ING’s largest TCF hub, relocating from Amsterdam, where he most recently spent almost four years as the bank’s global head of structured metals and energy finance. The bank is yet to announce his replacement in that role. He originally joined ING in 2001 as a trainee, and has accumulated over 19 years of experience at the bank, in both transactional and structured commodity finance.

This reorganisation comes after chief executive Steven van Rijswijk said last month that the bank would “refocus its activities”, closing offices in Asia and cutting around 1,000 jobs by year-end 2021.

Although ING’s shake-up comes on the heels of fellow Dutch bank ABN Amro’s decision to pull out of all trade and commodity finance activities following exposure to fraud in Asia, a bank spokesperson says that the decision is unrelated to the string of scandals.

ING was one of the largest creditors to Singapore-based commodities trader Agritrade, which collapsed in the first quarter of this year amid allegations of trade finance fraud. Court documents show that ING was owed US$96.9mn at the time of insolvency, making it one of the largest outstanding creditors alongside Natixis and Commerzbank. However, unlike ABN Amro, the bank is not believed to have suffered wider losses as a result of fraudulent activity at other commodities traders, including Hin Leong and Hontop Energy.