Big interview
Above: HSBC has a network of offices spanning 63 nations and territories.
Above right: The bank’s 220,000 employees are encouraged to embrace its digital future.
$6bn HSBC 10
The amount HSBC announced it was investing in digital transformation in 2021.
was initially built to support payments, supply chains and the like, Van Wyk explains that it’s since morphed into something even more sophisticated. “Over the past five years,” he notes, “a range of new capabilities were introduced: a liquidity management dashboard and cash-flow forecasting tools, guarantees management and real- time transactional FX to lock in rates when making a payment.” Once more, HSBC’s vast holdings do much to justify these investments. As Van Wyk says, last year HSBCnet hosted 421 million payments together worth a bewildering $14.7trn, alongside 140 million customer API calls. As so often at HSBC, meanwhile, the bank is barrelling forward with a raft of other improvements. Like with SmartServe, customer feedback is important here, for instance when HSBC tweaked the way clients accessed company mandates. It’s the same story looking ahead, with customer demand driving a feature that’ll allow them to check cash flow forecasting online. In a more general sense, indeed, Van Wyk’s job would be impossible without close human relationships. The time has long passed when a CIO could merely crouch at their computer, leaving knotty interpersonal matters at the door. And if that’s apparent from the executive’s work with customers, it’s true inside the office too. Van Wyk, for his part, views his role in precisely these terms, explaining how “the responsibility of my team” is to ensure technology works well for customers and colleagues alike, “especially as more and more of the bank becomes digitised”. And if making HSBC’s 220,000- odd employees comfortable with digitalisation is naturally crucial here, Van Wyk sees working with his fellow executives just as equally pressing. Success, he says, relies on partnering with group leadership teams and management teams – the very people, after all, who are ultimately responsible for running the bank’s operations.
Borrow for tomorrow Between SmartServe and HSBCnet, it’s tempting to imagine that Van Wyk can rest easy. But if the bank certainly seems to be in a strong position to battle
the coming economic squall – HSBC recently posted pre-tax profits of 18% even as a sliding pound and potential loan losses worried investors – Van Wyk’s schedule is as frantic as ever. As always in the finance space, fraud is a special worry, particularly for an institution of HSBC’s size. Once again, Van Wyk argues that new technology can really be a salve here: his bank now exploits AI to screen 1.1 billion monthly transactions for signs of financial crime. As the CIO adds, cybersecurity can also be bolstered with the clever use of ones and zeros. Among other things, that includes using technology to learn customer habits, how they type or carry their phones, and only implementing extra security checks if things get suspicious.
Of course, not even a technology evangelist like
Van Wyk could hope to flourish on digitalisation alone. Fortunately, the CIO doesn’t have to, with personal relationships again proving their worth. “My family is everything to me,” he says, “so my greatest happiness comes from spending time with them. We love to travel as a family and explore new parts of the world. I also really enjoy sketching – I am a bit of a closet cartoonist. Finally, as a family, we have a passion for charity work. Giving back from how we have been blessed, specifically focusing on supporting children with special needs.” With all that ballast, moreover, you get the impression that Van Wyk can return to his professional life more energised than ever. From that $6bn investment, he hopes to make further progress into the digital uplands, climbing from a base that’s already seen HSBCnet welcome over two million more customers in the first half of 2022 than the same period last year. That’s shadowed by specific innovations, notably HSBC’s work on central bank digital currencies. “There are technologies that are really only just being commercialised now, like quantum computing,” Van Wyk adds, “which could have a significant impact on how we run areas of the bank in the future.” That’s doubtless true – a fact that’s bound to keep HSBC’s marketing team busy long after those seminal 2001 ads are forgotten. ●
Future Banking /
www.nsbanking.com
HSBC; Stefano Carnevali/
Shutterstock.com
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