Reports
HSBC Outlines Scope Of Wealth, Personal Banking New Division

HSBC has set out more detail on the way that its new wealth and personal banking business group, announced a few days ago, will work. The bank is restructuring its operations to recover its fortunes after being hit by a large fall in profits for 2019.
HSBC, which, as recently
announced, is streamlining its business to boost efficiency,
yesterday set out more details on its plans to combine retail
banking, wealth management and private banking into a new
unit.
The new group is called Wealth and Personal Banking (WPB), with a
combined $1.4 trillion of assets and therefore one of the world’s
largest. Almost half of the assets are from Asia: the Hong
Kong/London-listed bank has, like some peers, pivoted towards the
region in recent years. Across Asia, where wealth pools are
growing faster than in any other region, HSBC’s wealth revenues
grew by 12 per cent in 2019 (year-on-year) to $5.7 billion.
Wealth and personal banking will cover the spectrum of private
wealth, from retail clients to ultra-high net worth individuals,
HSBC said in a statement.
“This move creates one of the world’s largest and fastest growing
wealth franchises, centred in Asia and serving clients around the
world. HSBC’s wealth propositions are compelling, increasingly
digital and support individuals no matter where they are in their
wealth journey, from first time investors – to clients
considering generational planning needs,” Charlie Nunn, chief
executive of WPB, said.
In 2019, HSBC grew affluent from emerging high net worth clients
globally in Premier and Jade, respectively, by 7 per cent and 14
per cent year-on-year. Over half of Jade’s total clients globally
are in Asia. (Premier customer primary eligibility is based on an
average total relationship balance of $100,000 or more with
market variance; Jade customer primary eligibility is based on an
average Total Relationship Balance of $1 million or more with
market variance.)
Global private banking, where profit before tax grew by 19 per
cent, attracted a record $23 billion of net new money in 2019,
two thirds of which was in Asia. 2019 also saw an increase in
Asia client assets of 22 per cent to $151 billion.
Recruitment
HSBC said recruitment for wealth teams across Hong Kong,
Singapore and mainland China is “on track”. Since 2017, both
businesses have recruited 800 people, including private bank
relationship managers, investment counsellors, UHNW solution
specialists and product specialists, and Jade directors and
relationship managers, investment and insurance specialists.
Last year, four Jade Centres were opened across Singapore, Hong
Kong and Shanghai. This year, HSBC has recently opened two more
centres in Hong Kong and plans to open one in Beijing.