Big interview
efforts are worthwhile. With a soaringly complex client base – the bank’s virtual assistance tool fields queries in eight languages – HSBC couldn’t hope to survive without grabbing at every digital lever it can reach. More than that, every one of those levers offers vast new opportunities, and could ultimately help this most catholic of banks reach an even bigger audience.
Global finance
It feels thoroughly appropriate that Steve Van Wyk should have ended up as CIO at HSBC. Working at such a world-spanning institution, the man himself is a model of internationalism, studying in Iowa before starting his career at Morgan Stanley. Hopping the Atlantic in 2006, he was an executive at Dutch giant ING until 2012. Following a second stint in America – this time as joint CIO and COO at Pittsburgh bank PNC – Van Wyk would, in 2021, cross to the Old World once more: to take up the top IT position at HSBC’s Canary Wharf headquarters. To phrase it differently, Van Wyk is arguably as cosmopolitan as his employer, something he seems keenly aware of. “To take advantage of our global scale,” he says, “we are developing global platforms that can be rapidly deployed across all of the 63 markets that we serve, and at the same time providing the flexibility for the local markets to innovate and invent better ways to deliver and exceed local customer expectations. Truly using our global strength – where every market is a point of customer innovation.” That, if nothing else, goes some way towards explaining HSBC’s mammoth investment in new technology. Representing 19% of last year’s adjusted operating expenses, that $6bn package looks to speed up delivery and sharpen customer service. Considering HSBC boasts some 40 million clients, mostly spread across a trio of global businesses, that’s likely just as well. Yet if the sheer enormity of the bank’s operations are one cause for HSBC’s digital charge, it is far from the only explanation. That’s clear when you consider what other institutions are doing. From UniCredit (a €2.8bn digitalisation pot), to CaixaBank (an estimated annual IT budget of $809m), it’s obvious that similar shifts are happening right across the industry. Van Wyk agrees, suggesting that the technical upheavals of recent decades, notably around smartphones, are undoubtedly a “push factor” for institutions of all sizes. That’s echoed by the statistics as well: some 61% of American consumers bank online each week, while a quarter of the British population now have digital-only accounts. And as Van Wyk continues, the pandemic has only hastened these advances – as has the huge proliferation of new technologies like cloud computing and machine learning.
Future Banking /
www.nsbanking.com
Steve Van Wyk, Group CIO of HSBC, wants the group to harness its global strengths.
Customer servers
First impressions are always key – and in the case of banking they’ve sometimes been toe-curlingly bad. Just look at the numbers. According to a study by Deloitte, banks contact customers ten times during the onboarding process, as they stumble past thickets of rules and regulations. It goes without saying that business onboarding can be even more time-consuming. As another recent survey found, it can take as long as 100 days for a bank’s corporate clients to get settled, perhaps unsurprising when KYC and money laundering are now such hot topics (HSBC itself was recently fined £63.9m for just such a breach). Van Wyk, at any rate, recognises the difficulties here, stressing how vital it is for HSBC to quickly grasp customer needs. It makes sense, moreover, that the very start of a customer relationship should be one area where Van Wyk and his team deploy their biggest technical weapons. That begins with SmartServe, a platform which cuts the number of questions HSBC asks new corporate customers by 30%. That’s possible through the digitalisation of data and public registries, making it easier to reuse information when greeting multi- country clients – especially helpful for an institution with such a wide reach. From there, HSBC has adopted e-signing and video verification, alongside a host of other digital titbits, which Van Wyk explains are all aimed at giving “the customer greater convenience”. Combined with other adjustments, notably around security and it’s little wonder HSBC staff save time here too. Yet if onboarding hints at the immense potential of the technical revolution, it’s far from the only area HSBC is reforming. An obvious case study is HSBCnet, the firm’s internet banking channel for commercial and corporate clients. Though the system
421 million
The number of payments the HSBCnet platform hosted last year.
HSBC 9
HSBC
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