A leak late last year revealed that the bank would have built a standalone digital bank, similar to NAB’s UBank, aimed specifically at business customers in order to fend off competition from rival banks.
HSBC group chief executive and group chief operating officer Andy Maguire told delegates at the Money 20/20 conference that HSBC wanted to deliver innovation to its customers.
“HSBC is a commercial bank, that’s how we started. We really wanted to reimagine the way we work, but not in an unrecognizable way,” he said.
Mr Maguire said commercial banking was complicated and the bank did not want to just offer a simplified digital banking solution.
“Commercial banking is complicated and you can’t do everything the way you want. We wish you could, but we have to follow the rules,” he said.
Customer experience was always at the forefront of the project, Maguire said, and the bank’s solutions helped drive it forward.
“We wanted to offer the best of both worlds, the best customer experience and the capabilities of a big bank. We continue to use our back end without impacting the front end,” he said.
Mr Maguire said the new digital offering would hopefully capture new customers and perhaps take on some existing customers as well.
“Hopefully we will attract people who don’t yet do business with HSBC, but maybe some already do. We are also prepared for this cannibalization,” he said.
The bank planned to launch its first iteration in the UK before hopefully expanding further.
“You have to think about where you deploy because you can end up with uncollectible debts and obviously the UK was the right market for us,” he said.
HSBC has invested in a host of fintechs to help deliver innovative and efficient services, but Mr Maguire said they had been very deliberate in choosing globally focused businesses.
“We need partners who have thought about how this is going to work in other markets. We want people who have this mindset and who think about universal solutions,” he said.
Mr Maguire said next year would be exciting for the bank as it looked to launch its digital offering into the market.
“By the end of the year we will be very close to this goal and that is when we can make a huge difference to the business and deliver benefits to our customers,” he said. -he declared.
