No matter what competitors do, contending with a 158-year-old bank with a presence in 64 economies and a wealth balance the size of Australia’s gross domestic product is going to be hard. Especially if it has a knack for reinvention.
HSBC Global Private Banking is all that and more. Hong Kong is the private bank’s biggest and most profitable booking centre, but HSBC also remains Asia’s clear market leader in the high net-worth category, winning this year’s award.
HSBC’s business is solid across both the HNW and the UHNW segments. Its dedicated investment counsellors, relationship managers, credit advisers, product specialists and wealth planners keep rivals on their toes.
It helps that HSBC has a sprawling global network and strengths as a universal bank. It means it provides the full range of wealth management functions with great expertise, as well as sharp investment advisory and innovative product offerings in banking, capital markets, lending and corporate financing.
Then there’s the breadth of HSBC’s services. It works with multi-generational Asian families, offering the full suite of wealth advisory and structure services. These include succession planning, family governance, family office needs, philanthropy and trust administration.
In the HNW segment, expert relationship managers are the key to HSBC’s success. Their skills are augmented by comprehensive retail banking services and an unbeatable digital platform allowing clients to track their wealth every second of the day.
In November 2022, the bank launched its game-changing HSBC Prism advisory service – a contractual, portfolio-based offering that’s already operating successfully in the UK, France, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
Prism’s mandate is to generate a more sustainable revenue stream for HSBC that is less reliant on prevailing markets conditions. It increases internal accountability, too, by attaching tangible value to views and advice emanating from HSBC’s chief investment office.
For clients, it’s a new way to marry the bank’s digital technology with human expertise. Clients can harness these resources to decide on the most appropriate investment positions and the best way to diversify using analytical tools and simulations.
In September 2022, HSBC rolled out an insurance advisory model to address HNW clients and families at life’s multiple stages. It offers direct access to HSBC Life International. A dedicated team of advisers stands by for queries.
HSBC, whose Asia head of global private banking is Siew Meng Tan, unveiled a new coverage model in July in Hong Kong and Singapore for HNW clients with wealth of $2 million to $10 million. The idea is to have one single adviser as their only touchpoint, to cover all their wealth needs in a more efficient way. Here, HSBC uses its investments and wealth solutions (IWS) Insights Lab to push out investment content to clients digitally, gets product support from its impact team, and transaction support from the transaction banking officers.
It’s all part of the bank’s ambition to become the trusted lifetime partner for HNW families.
HSBC is also named best digital private bank this year, in part thanks to the sheer scale of its user base and the ubiquity of its app, but also because of the firm’s constant reinvention.
Putting the full power of the bank’s capabilities in every customer’s pocket is proving lucrative. Demand for HSBC’s private banking app is strong, while broadly, the bank gets well over 1 billion logins per year from personal clients alone.
At the private banking division, HSBC was a pioneer in allowing clients to access portfolios anytime, anywhere. It offers real-time access to trading, investment, research and out-of-box themes from a wide variety of trusted thought leaders – all provided in a secure way using facial recognition and fingerprint technology.
Users can get as much detail as they want on portfolio valuations, and on promising investment themes and asset allocation strategies using dynamic visualization charts and graphics.
HSBC’s insights and research products are proving popular and a key differentiator in the market. Drawing on the bank’s sprawling international network and deep understanding of Asian markets, the portal offers a vast range of research findings, investment content and perspective from thought leaders everywhere. The service is featured prominently on the HSBC Global Private Banking app.
The app forms a vital nexus for the collaborative approach for attracting net new money between HSBC’s global private bank and its commercial banking arm. It’s also a way to discern new client opportunities via referral channels like the commercial banking and global banking and markets units. This helps power HSBC’s ambitions to increase its financial footprint and the potency of its international connectivity.